Rogers County has hired an Army National Guardsman and former Claremore High School teacher to manage its opioid abatement grant.
Scott Greenland started in his position as project manager Monday. He will take charge on managing the $506,158 the state awarded Claremore and Rogers County earlier this year to combat the opioid epidemic.
District 3 Commissioner Ron Burrows, who introduced Greenland at the commissioners’ Monday meeting, said Greenland will help the city and county reap future state opioid abatement grants.
“[It’s] new money for an extended number of years, but we’re not going to get it going forward unless we have results,” Burrows said.
Greenland said he has just returned from seven months of training with the Oklahoma Army National Guard. Apart from his military service, Greenland said, he has taught sociology and psychology at Claremore High School and accumulated 20 years in church mission work.
He said his career has given him useful experience in working with people and creating new initiatives, and he hopes to be a familiar face as the program gets off the ground.
“[I’m] just excited that this is something that is in my community,” Greenland said. “That’s one of the things I’m most passionate about because I’ve dealt with all those aspects of the consequences of the opioid problem over the years from every age, so hopefully we can see some progress.”
Also at Monday’s meeting, Burrows reminded attendees the Oklahoma Department of Transportation began reconstructing the Interstate 44 and State Highway 66 interchange in Catoosa Monday.
The objective of the project is to straighten the curve of Interstate 44 and add lanes, according to ODOT.
Burrows said it’s wonderful that ODOT is starting a major project in northeast Oklahoma, but he said contractor Sherwood Construction is stretched thin with its other projects.
“It’s going to be very disruptive over the next several months for people who commute back and forth from Tulsa,” Burrows said.
ODOT said in a press release that it hopes to complete the project by summer 2026, in time for Route 66’s centennial.
Scotty Stokes, director of Rogers County Emergency Management, said the county has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to reimburse District 3 $317,020.50 for tornado costs.
Stokes said this covers the cost the district incurred clearing storm debris, including personnel hours and materials.
He said the county has measured all the debris, and District 1 Commissioner Dan DeLozier said he’ll begin burning his district’s and District 2’s debris in the coming days.
“They’re going to start burning the small piles first to get those out of our hair, and then we’ll change the temperature in Rogers County by lighting that big one,” DeLozier said.
District 3 has stored its debris behind the county warehouse off King Road; Burrows said in September that he would chip up his district’s debris to reduce impact on nearby homeowners.
The commissioners signed off on agreements with two Rogers County property owners, Jim Olsen and George Bohl, to enter their properties to remove trees DeLozier said are about to fall on the road.
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