Wagner Strategic Visioning Committee
On March 11, 2008 a group from the Visioning Committee met along with Dave and Kari from SDSU. The meeting was help at noon in the back room at Two Spurs. Members present were: Linda Soukup, Dawn Bures, Todd Doom, Jerry Barnett, Barb Johannsen, and Jeff Doom.
Jerry Barnett reported for the education committee. He had spoke with Dana Sanderson about they had been working on. Dana commented that the committee met last week, the meeting went well and the group is on task. They have an event planned on career exploration, that is staged to take place before the end of the school year. Have asked for additional information from the committee and will report it as soon as I receive it.
On April 4th and 5th there will be a training for facilitators for another round of study circles. The topic of this time will be diversity and racism. We need to find 6-8 people that are interested in taking the classes and then leading a group through the 5 week class. Dave and Kari both feel this would be a great thing for our community to do, as did the members at the meeting. If interested please contact Dana Sanderson or Ericka Kotab at the school.
The Clean Up Committee was reported by Dawn Bures. The dates set for the 2008 year are May 3 and Aug 2. SD Nat Guard has said they will be available for both events to offer man power, and trucks. The Yankton Sioux Tribe has not been contacted yet, but will and hope to coordinate efforts to bring our entire community together. Linda Soukup reported for the Beautification Committee. The minutes have been posted on the blog site from the meeting they held on Feb 27th. At this point letters of support have been received from the city and chamber for the applications we are submitting for grant money. The applications for the grants will be submitted soon and the committee plans to meet again mid April.
The Youth Committee was reported by Jerry Barnett who spoke with Dana Sanderson. Dana and a group of students conducted a survey through the middle and high-school. Through the survey they found they had too much information and need to meet again to put together a second survey. The survey is hoped to be done by our next meeting.
The group talked extensively about options for out community on the lines of the movie theater that both Armour and Tripp are running in their community. We all feel the communities are doing a great job of providing this service and wonder what Wagner could do to offer “something to do”. Many of us feel that the communities are doing a great job and we do not want to step on toes by doing our own, also they use a great force of volunteers and will Wagner be able to find the same? Maybe we could take a bus of people to watch the shows, was one idea. But we left the topic with the idea that we should try to think of something that we could do, unique to our community, to fill this void. Ideas are: community theater, city movie night, dinner theater. Please let us know if you have an idea!!
Jeff Doom reported for the Business Development group. Chamber is showing more involvement with their continued efforts to get more people involved. He did not think there had been any work done on the Welcome Baskets we wanted to make available. Jeff was going to talk to Sharon Harr who was to be working on those and see where we were on that. Matt Cerny the Economic Development Coordinator was at a Horizon’s workshop in Lincoln, so was not available to report. But we are told he has been going to several meetings and knows about others available and were encouraged to ask him about these.
Before the end of the meeting Dave gave each group member a list of ideas for answering this month’s blog questions. The questions are dealing with poverty. 3 topic starters include: Methods for determining the level of poverty in your community, What community resources will be needed to sustain the community plan to reduce poverty, and What additional resources would make a difference in your community’s work to reduce poverty? This is to be blogged about through the month of March.
The next meeting will be April 8, 2008, noon, at Two Spurs. Members from each committee are urged to attend.
April 5th, 2008 at 7:22 am
We have a Welcome Basket program in Tyndall and it is going very well. Our local florist makes them up with items from all businesses who want to donate to the basket–brochures,business cards, gift certificates, promotional items,etc. Chamber pays them for the basket, so that helps them. We have a volunteer from one of our churches who takes them to the new people. It seems to be a “welcome” thing!