Turnpike Truths Summit Set to Expose OTA’s Sham Town Halls
The OTA and their corridor managers, POE & Associates and Garver Engineering, aren’t interested in your voice — they demand your silence, your obedience, and your surrender.
PIKE OFF OTA to Host Turnpike Truths Summit Monday April 28th from 6-7:45 pm in Purcell
PIKE OFF OTA and the Oklahomans for Responsible Transportation will hold another Turnpike Truths Summit. This time we are headed to Purcell. We will be there tomorrow, Monday, April 28th from 6-7:45 pm.
We’ve sent postcards, utilized social media and even put some ads in the Purcell paper to try and ensure every property and homeowner and citizen in the surrounding area knows about the proposed turnpikes.
If there is anything else that you can think of that we could be doing to inform the citizenry about these turnpikes and OTA’s sordid history with these plans, please send an email to admin@pikeoffota.com with your ideas.
OTA to host two public meetings in May
In reponse to Pike Off OTA meeting with the public about the movement of the proposed southern extension out of the Bureau of Reclamation’s fee title lands, the OTA has decided to host two public meetings so that residents can “share input on the South Extension Turnpike..”
They will be held Monday May 19th at Countdown Event Center, 3201 Deskin Drive, Norman and Wednesday, May 21st at the Purcell Multi-Purpose Center.
We encourage all of you to go, but you need to be INFORMED about the history of this fight and what they did to us at the last set of townhalls in Spring of 2022.
Please keep reading and watching and DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH so that you understand what you are up against.
The OTA spokesperson, Terry Angier (who was resurrected out of retirement in 2025 to try and smooth things over with the public), said that “the comments, information and input we receive will help our engineers working on the route alignment study and ultimately guide the OTA’s decision making for the South Extension.”
They don’t care what you think. A turnpike through east Norman is BAD and UNNECESSARY and UNJUSTIFIED where ever they put it. Don’t fall into their trap to pit neighbor versus neighbor. Stay united and simply say NO. WE DON’T WANT A TURNPIKE. And ask pointed and repeated questions.
And record it. EVERYTHING.
Side Note before I get too far away from this announcement….
You must understand history to understand what is happening today — because, as George Santayana warned, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Every time an announcement is made or a news story runs about the OTA, you need to be actively asking yourself hard questions. First, who are the players? Second, what skin do they have in the game? And third, are there conflicts of interest lurking beneath the surface that make their "facts" nothing more than carefully packaged lies? If you don’t ask — if you don’t dig — you are handing them exactly what they want: your silence, your obedience, and your land.
Notice who this announcement came from and who is quoted in it. The name is not one that we’ve seen in the past three years connected to the ACCESS program, although it is familiar to those of us in the industry. Terry Angier began her career at the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) in 1990. She was named the department’s chief of media and public relations in 1995. In May 2019, she was named the Secretary of Transportation’s (Tim Gatz at the time) direct report and Interagency Liaison and in July 2022 she retired from ODOT.
Terri Angier has a history in Norman during our first brush with a proposed “east-loop.” She was quoted in the following Sunday Oklahoman article from February 14, 1999.
“If we don’t have the support of the people who initially came to us, who are we doing this for?” - Terri Angier, ODOT spokesperson 1999.
I agree wholeheartedly Ms. Angier. Twenty-six years later, the people are ADAMENT they STILL do NOT WANT A TURNPIKE or any 6-lane highspeed roadway through east Norman.
So, exactly who ARE we doing this for?
And what pulled you out of retirement to be the THIRD OTA spokesperson the OTA has cycled through in the past THREE YEARS?
For the newbies reading this substack, in case you didn’t know, the OTA started with Ms. Jessica Brown who disappeared sometime in 2023. Then it was Lisa Shearer-Salim as the stand-in, and in spring of 2025, they paraded out this very experienced and accomplished state-agency media relations persona, Ms. Angier.
In this July 2022 Oklahoma Transportation Commission (OTC) Meeting, Ms. Angier is sitting to Mr. Tim Gatz’s right (former Director of the OTA, former Secretary of Transportation and current director of ODOT) in the navy blue tank dress. Go to minute mark 9:12 and listen to Mr. Gatz announce that Ms. Angier will be retiring after 32 years of meritorious service.
“She has done us an exceptional job. She has excelled in every role that she’s ever been in with the department of transportation, most recently serving as my interagency liaison as I transitioned into the Secretarial Role. She’s been invaluable. We are going to miss her institutional knowledge and prospective on everything that’s gone on with the department of transportation and we are going to be sorry to see her go.” - Mr. Tim Gatz on Ms. Terri Angier’s service and retirement in the July 2022 Oklahoma Transportation Commission Meeting.
Pleas ask yourself why is Ms. Angier back out of retirement trying to smooth over the public relations on this ACCESS project for the OTA?
Does she have any financial conflicts-of-interests in attempting to convince the public to stop fighting these turnpikes and sell their land to the OTA all while painting OTA in a good light for the public?
Did you know that her husband, Keith Angier, has been the Vice-President for MacArthur since 1997? MacArthur is one of the prime consulting firms working on the ACCESS Oklahoma designing the I-35 interchange segment of the East-West Connector (EWC 28001 and 28002). They are also the prime consultant for the Tri-City Connector (TCC 29001 and 29002).
Through January 31, 2025, MacArthur has collected more than $7 million in fees. Their design contract amount currently is $33.5 million.
Guess who also works for MacArthur Engineering? Her son, Chase. He was hired at MacArthur in 2016.
An unelected board, buried inside a legislatively-created, bond-churning arm of the state, has been handed the State of Oklahoma’s raw power of eminent domain — not for public good, but to build private toll roads. And who do they hire to spin it all to the public? A media relations officer whose husband’s company stands to cash in *at least* $33.5 million once these "ACCESS" segments are bulldozed into existence. Corruption isn’t hiding in the shadows — it’s waving at you in broad daylight.
Previous OTA Townhalls held in 2022
Now back to the townhalls…..
If you are new to the fight, let me remind you that the OTA hosted FOUR public meetings back in Spring of 2022 to gather “input,” and answer citizen questions and they were a complete and utter joke.
We have never seen a compilation of all of the comment cards we submitted or received answers to our questions.
None of our input was EVER taken into consideration.
In fact, the engineers at the townhalls couldn’t ANSWER any questions and kept telling us “they didn’t know,” or “we haven’t done that yet,” or “the routes were just given to us and we haven’t started to study them yet.”
If you are thinking about going to these meetings next month, please watch this video first so you know how it is probably going to go down.
This is from the April 19, 2022 “public” town hall meeting at the Norman Central Library. Look at all the tables they have set up and listen to the citizens get gaslit from OTA’s minions. What did we really learn from these meetings?
We learned that the OTA wasn’t going to move these routes, and that the traffic justified them and that they would “complete the impact studies” prior to starting the design….
Yeah… about that….. It’s been THREE YEARS. Where are all the impact studies?
They don’t even pretend to care. In the beginning I thought that they were engaging in REVERSE ENGINEERING, which would be to pick the route they wanted first and then make the studies look good later. This is totally unethical engineering behavior by the way.
But they don’t even try to cover their asses with fake justification studies and doctored environmental impact reports. They just build the route and never do the studies.
Because no one has ever stood up to stop them. Until now.
Oh…. and I forgot my favorite propaganda line that every OTA minion had to memorize and repeat ad nauseum….. “Eminent domain is the most serious thing we do…”
Yeah.. so serious that they would not even publicly state HOW MANY HOUSES THEY WERE GOING TO PAVE OVER…. and STILL HAVEN’T. Watch Ms. Jessica Brown, OTA’s first failed spokesperson, tell the news outlets they don’t yet know the number of homes detroyed and then if you have time, watch the entire montage of news clips up through the end of 2022 (Ms. Jessica “crazy-eyes” Brown at 0:30).
What makes this arrogant, unethical, dirty, and the complete antithesis to a PROPERLY designed new alignment roadway is that it costs money to acquire right-of-way. So, in order to have an estimate of their right-of-way budget, the OTA has to have an estimate of how many homes are in the path of these urban turnpikes.
Three years later, ladies and gentleman, and we STILL DON’T HAVE AN OFFICIAL ESTIMATE OF HOW MANY PEOPLE WILL LOSE THEIR PROPERTY AND HOMES. And the condemnation process has started at the Canadian River Crossing.
And in case you want to know just how “serious” they take eminent domain, reread how they hosed the families along the Kickapoo with low-ball offers for their homes and properties.
Remember, this Ms. Jessica Brown was the spokesperson who GREENLIGHTED the purchasing of dozens of domain names February 8, 2022 (14 days BEFORE THE PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT) to stop opposition groups (like PIKE OFF OTA) from mounting any successful counter measures to stop the turnpikes.
Do you STILL THINK THAT THE OTA REALLY WANTS YOUR INPUT AT THESE TOWNHALLS?
This is a REAL picture by the way. It’s from the Association of General Contractor (AOGC) Safety Awards in November of 2023. The picture that Mr. Echelle is holding is ALSO REAL. He’s really driving a car out of NYC with a bunch of money bags in the backseat after he went there to meet with the bond rating agencies to pitch the ACCESS PROGRAM. He was given this picture by the AOGC as an award - most likely acknowledging his ability to enrich all those connected with the OTA.
The AOGC 990s can be searched here. According to the 2023 filed 990 Part 7, Mr. Stem made a cool $332,500 salary to promote the road building industry in the state of Oklahoma. His salary is paid by membership dues and registration fees of the Oklahoma Road Building Community.
The OTA is running a con. They pretend to want your input, but the truth is, they only want the bond money to keep their Ponzi scheme alive. Their plan was set in stone back in the 1990s—your voice was never part of it. If we don’t stop them, they’ll bulldoze through East Norman, plowing over homes, farms, and communities, choosing their path based only on where they face the least federal pushback. This isn’t development—it’s destruction for profit.
And make no mistake — they won’t choose a route to protect homes, wildlife, drinking water, wetlands, or ranch land. They’ll lay asphalt wherever it's easiest, not where it’s right. Their real priority is keeping the unlimited bond market spigot wide open, pumping out over $10 billion (at least….. with inflation and cost overruns) in freshly printed bond money straight into the pockets of engineering consultants, highway contractors, bridge companies, and every insider riding the gravy train. This isn’t about public need — it’s about private greed, paid for with your land, your water, and your future.
Have you seen what they wanted to do in the 1990s? Check out this compilation of news stories and a City of Norman meeting from 1998 to learn about how the OTA tried to do this before and got pushed out…. and got told HELL NO…
What’s different 26 years later?
And let us not dare forget what then-Deputy Director Joe Echelle stood up and told the Norman City Council back in March of 2022. He laid out promises about what they would do before they started ripping people’s properties away.
How much of it have they done?
Not a damn thing.
Maya Angelou warned us: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
They showed us exactly who they are — liars drunk on power — and every day we hesitate, they drive another stake into the heart of our community.
The only way they truly win is if we give up — if we stop fighting and fall into silent obedience. No matter how tough the battle gets, we must keep going. Because this isn’t just about us. It’s about the generations to come — our children, our grandchildren — who deserve to live free from the assault on our private property rights and peaceful rural living that we are experiencing now. We fight today so they will never have to.
Use the knowledge and evidence we've gathered over the past three years to arm yourselves with facts, not fear, so that your decisions are grounded in reality, not panic.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
We’ve promised to address this section since our last town hall. Given how packed this substack is with crucial information, I’ll focus on answering the one question we’ve received more than any other and I’ll tackle the rest of them in the next few weeks and months. Some are quick answers and some will require you to truly understand the business model of the OTA to appreciate the answer.
Where will the proposed Southern Extension be moved to and where will it connect with the East-West Connector?
The short answer is, as of Sunday, April 27, 2025, no-one, but POE and Associates and the OTA know for sure.
But they have given us some clues that we can use to decipher where they are probably headed. I wrote about the OTA’s Announcement to move the Southern Extension location in Norman due to the Bureau of Reclamation’s denial of passage over their fee title land in December of 2022. The OTA made their announcement on March 4th 2025 and sent an email to “stakeholders” that same day telling them that….
“It has been determined that the preliminary alignment has to be adjusted to comply with the Bureau of Reclamation land at Lake Thunderbird.”
“We will use a team of professionals to revisit the SET for opportunities to modify the alignment, likely to the west that does not cross the Bureau of Reclamation fee title land.” ~Joe Echelle
Then, on Monday, March 31st plane N3507F took off to complete an OTA survey of the proposed southern extension area. You can see the flight details on Flight Aware.
On Monday April 21st, that same plane did a survey of the proposed location of the east-west connector. Note how the survey was flown a bit closer to Lake Stanley Draper than the original route shown on their ACCESS Website.
According to the ACCESS OKLAHOMA website, the yellow is “active” design and the pink is “future- under revision.”
And so, from these numerous clues the OTA has dropped of where they may be planning to move the Southern Extension, we hypothesize that the southern route will move west somewhere between 48th and 72nd….
And in order to get out of the most easements and impact the least amount of properties and utilities, they will most likely go between 48th and 60th… This is close to the location of the ORIGINALLY studied outer-loop in the late 1990s. You can read all about the Outer-Loop History on the PIKE OFF OTA website, where we have compiled many of the newspaper articles from that time.
To further narrow that down, we feel like the most likely route is just east of the Robin Hill School. The ROW might start 600 feet east and be about 600 feet wide… so 1200-1800 feet east of 48th. We have been contacted by several homeowners in that area that have been approached by the OTA and their Right-of-Way team, POE and Associates, to purchase their land.
But to be clear. The OTA hasn’t announced a specific route, only that it will be west of the current one. Based on our contacts and understanding of how the OTA operates, we’re taking our best guess as to where they’ll likely try to move it.
