Watonga Wins KOB Award

The city of Watonga came away big winners Nov. 17 at the Keep Oklahoma Beautiful awards ceremony. The event was held at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.

The town was named the first-place winner in the category of government programs in a municipality of less than 25,000 population. That would include more than 25 percent of towns in the state. The win was the result of the early spring townwide cleanup. That program made roll off dumpsters available on Noble Avenue for residents to leave off their items, whether those items were big or small, brush or obsolete appliances.

According to Karrie Beth Little, the city manager, the town collected and disposed of more than 374,000 pounds of large bulk waste. City employees worked at the site of the old lumber yard daily to move items from the ground to the dumpsters and keep up with the collections.

In the initial round, Watonga was one of three finalists. The other two were Anadarko and Stroud.

Although there was no monetary consideration with the award, the win was enough for the town to plan to continue its strides in cleaning and maintaining the progress made toward a clean, modern municipality.