Please forgive my absence from these pages for the past week. It's been unusually busy for a quiet vacation period, a time to catch up on a lot of things around the house. Expect to hear from me more often as the City of Tulsa's campaign season heats up.

Today the Tulsa County Board of Commissioners has their first meeting of the year, as does the Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority (aka the Fair Board, which includes the three commissioners). I'd like to tell you what's on the agenda, but the County's website doesn't allow access to the agendas or meeting schedules. I suspect there's some reorganization of the site going on at the moment, and they haven't got all the links working again.

After a bit of poking around, I was able to find my way to the agenda. The meeting is in the usual place, room 119 of the County Administration Building at 500 S. Denver, at the usual time, 9:30 am. Current chairman Wilbert Collins will give a "State of the County" address, and the commissioners will elect a chairman and a chairman pro-tem for 2004. No indication of who will get the nod, but it should be Randi Miller's turn in the normal rotation.

The Fair Board will meet at 2 today in room 119 to consider the Drillers' request for fireworks displays this season. There's also this very vague item:

9. Consider and vote on ratification of Facilities Lease Agreements as listed on attached forms

Of course, the attached forms aren't available on the County's website, so we don't know whether or not they have a lease agreement pending with an air horn tradeshow and convention or plan to host a concert by some band with a name like "Bleeding Ears". The Fair Board has a history of sneaking these things through.