Forgive Mike Sparks for being happy, possibly even giddy, right now.

“I’m just smiling because I got to open three blacktops - three major blacktops,” said the District 2 Kingfisher County commissioner.

That’s a claim Sparks can now make as major projects on Dover-Crescent Road, Beard Blacktop and Sheridan Road have wrapped up in the last couple of weeks.

Two have been at the forefront of projects on the board for a majority of Sparks’ tenure since he succeeded Ray Shimanek when he was sworn in on Jan. 2.

The third and largest in terms of dollars - the three-mile stretch of Dover- Crescent Road that was completely repaved from County Road N2890 east to N2920 (Banner Road) started even before he took office.

Beard Blacktop, CR E700 north of Dover, saw the entirety of its nine miles repaved starting at U.S. Highway 81 and going east.

Another was a bridge replacement and repaving a part of Sheridan Road (CR N2970), which is the location of the old Six-Mile Bar on Dover-Crescent Road.

It is paved all the way north to State Highway 51.

“We ground it up last year, then chipped and sealed it,” said Sparks, a county employee for nearly three full decades. “Then last May we double chipped and sealed it, doubling up the asphalt there, which makes more of a road out of it.”

Sparks said he understands the frustrations of his constituents for the past several months as they’ve been forced to take detours.

“Nobody likes to be the new county commissioner with a bunch of roads closed,” he said.

However, said Sparks, the projects have been on the books for multiple years as they’re set up well in advance by the County Engineering District (CED).

“Those projects are set a few years in advance,” he said.

And they also come with money attached.

The CED pays a majority of the bill on those projects, leaving only about 10 percent falling to county taxpayers.

“So if I would refuse that money, they (CED) would get really aggravatwas ed,” Sparks said. “I may not have a chance at that opportunity to fix those roads for another five or six years down the road.”

And Sparks isn’t done. Another CED project about to begin is overlaying two miles of CR E715 starting at N2830 (the road just north of the Cimarron River bridge that heads east into Dover).

“People are probably going to get excited with me again because I’m going to shut it down probably in the middle of October,” Sparks said. “But if I turned it down, it would have been a long time before I got the chance again.

“But I feel this is what I should be doing.”

And, said Sparks, he’ll be out and about checking on its progress along with any others he has going in his district.

“I check on job sites all day long,” he said. “But you’ve got to be passionate about it and I am.”