Wagner, SD

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. 

On March 11, 2008 the Wagner Strategic Visioning Committee will meet to discuss our continued efforts and chart progress toward our established goals.  The meeting will be at noon at Two Spurs.

The group met in February with Dave Olson.  The meeting was attended by Linda Soukup, Barb Johannsen, Matt Cerny, Patty Frei, and Dawn Bures.  The major topics covered was Community Beautification committee, and another round of Study Circles.  The community beautification committee decided to meet on Feb 27 @ 7pm at the home of Linda Soukup.  The meeting was set to discuss with the entire committee the ideas of those involved and make a plan for how it will all come together.  Dawn and Linda will continue to lead the committee until it is established.

Patty informed us that the dates for facilitator training for the Study Circle facilitators will need to be moved and the new date for that is April 4 and 5 at the Wagner Fire Hall.  Patty will try to step in while Rita Kocer deals with a family emergency. 

 Dave Olson had some informational items he shared with the group.  There are a couple of training classes and events being held in the near future that might be of interest to our community members.  Matt has expressed interest in going to on that will be held in May in the Mlps area.  I will try to get a list of these and post them on here as there might be others interested in attending. 

 Dawn

On January 8, 2008 a group of Wagner residents gathered to discuss and review our progress and what we will be doing next.  Dave Olson facilitated the meeting and helped us to think about what we are currently working on.

 Matt Cerny talked about the city website that is now up and running.  You can find the site @ www.cityofwagner.org .  Matt will be the person keeping the site update and if you would like to see something new or different on there you can contact him at the city finance office. 

 The Chamber of Commerce has a goal of getting more business members to meetings and is implementing ideas to do so.  They are hoping to target new members and become a more lively bunch!! 

The Education committee is a group of go getters!  They had a meeting at the same time so will be posting minutes from that meeting at a later date.  From what we hear though, they are set and running - congratulations and thank you for your hard work!!

The community beautification crew have made their first step goals of getting together with city officials, SD Nat Guard, and YST to become a group that works to keep our community clean together.  Linda Soukup noted that she is working on grant ideas and planting ideas for that part of the goal.  There will be a meeting to collaborate on or before the middle of February. 

 There has been a goal established to have a Multicultural Study Circles in Wagner.  Training for that will be Feb 15th and 16th- tentatively!!  As  a person who has went through study circles, I encourage everyone to become involved!  It was a great experience where I learned a lot about our community, it’s members (whom I might never gotten to know) and myself! 

Our next meeting will be Feb 12, 2008.  Lets push for greater progress to report then!!  Great work to date.

Residents of the city of Wagner will have the option to go to the polls on Tuesday, December 4, 2007 to vote on a referred ordinance that will allow Wagner to operate their own electric utility. 

Voting is at Wagner’s City Hall from 7am-7pm; please bring photo identification.

The law in South Dakota  gives each city the option to operate their own electric utility.  This ordinance creates the Wagner Municipal Electric Utility.  If approved the city intends to operate its own electric utility to provide the service to the residents of Wagner. 

A YES vote means that you agree with and support the ordinance and are in favor of the City of Wagner creating a municipal utility to replace the present provider.  A NO vote means that you disagree with and do not support this ordinance, and are not in favor of creating Wagner Municipal Electric Utility. 

This information taken from the Wagner Post, Volume 103 Number 1

Goal 1: To Create an Attractive Community

Objective 1:             The Horizons Cleanup Task force will conduct semi-annual community clean-ups.  To be conducted the first weekends of May and August every year.

Implementation Steps:

1.  At the start of each year the task group will contact the City of Wagner, the Yankton Sioux Housing Authority (YSHA) and the National Guard to request participation.

a.    Ask City to contribute operators, equipment, volunteers and budget for landfill fees.

b.    Ask YSHA to furnish equipment, operators, use of their landfill, and volunteers.

c.      Ask National Guard to furnish trucks, operators, and volunteers.

2.      The week of the cleanup the committee will call homeowners and landlords to get permission to pick up “stuff.”

3.      Following each cleanup the task group will prepare a summary report to have available for presentations to service clubs and city officials for financial support and volunteer recruitment.

Evaluation Method:

The Horizons Annual Cleanup Committee will take before and after pictures to demonstrate progress in goal achievement.  The committee will prepare an article for the newspaper to be published the week following the cleanups, and submit a report to the Wagner Horizons Vision Group within 30 days of the cleanups. Information regarding the cleanups will be posted on the blog.

Objective 2:            Develop a Community Beautification Program

Implementation Steps:

1.      Form a Beautification Committee by February 1, 2008

2.      The committee will investigate areas to plant flowers and where to get funding by March 30, 2008.

3.        Committee will establish a “Yard of the Week” program to implement summer of 2008 by May 1, 2008. 

Evaluation Method:

The Horizons Vision Committee will ask the gardeners to take before and after pictures for a final report to the committee by October 31, 2008 with suggestion s for the following year.  Progress throughout the growing season will be posted on the blog.

Objective 3:            Determine ways to reduce vandalism & graffiti issues.

Implementation Steps:

1.      Form a committee to assess the severity and develop methods of intervention

2.      Contact city officials and seek their participation on the committee by February 1, 2008.

3.      Contact Law Enforcement to get their cooperation by January 15, 2008.

4.      Assess the extent of the problem by March 1, 2008.

5.      Contact other communities who have dealt with similar problems by May 1, 2008

6.      Develop and report a program to the Horizons Strategic Vision Committee by June 1, 2008.

7.      Implement the program beginning June 2, 2008 through December 31, 2008.

Method of Evaluation:

A record of the frequency of graffiti and vandalism for the past year will be established using police department records.  These will be compared with similar records during implementation and afterwards.

Before and after photos will be taken to record the improvements of individual incidents.

**With-in the past couple of weeks Weisser’s has been broke into.  The front glass door was broke and vandals gained entrance to go on and steal beer and cigerettes.**

Members of the Wagner community have been participated in the Study Circles and Leadership Plenty training provided through the Horizons II program, which was funded by the Northwest Area Foundation.  This training focused on leadership development of members of our community.  Those who participated learned how to express themselves in public, work in groups, deal with conflict, identify and refine community issues, and how to develop plans to take action.  It helped identify the human capital of our community—the skills and interests of our citizens and their willingness to make Wagner a better place in which to live, raise families, and retire.  New relationships also developed during the training.  This new social capital created the energy to address some of the issues that are in our community.  The plan that follows is first step in making Wagner safer, more attractive, and a more progressive community.

In order to provide community support of this community strategic plan, the Northwest Area Foundation requested that input be received from at least 15% of our community.  The number for Wagner’s was 201.  A total of 289 surveys were returned.  The community members were informed of the surveys through a newspaper article, drop boxes were at First Dakota National Bank & Commercial State Bank, Rotary members, Triple F Supply, Wagner Good Samaritan Center, Wagner Community Memorial Hospital, the Visioning Committee, and Wagner Community School. Students and school staff returned 226.  The results of these surveys will be shared with the school district staff and youth agencies of the community.  Thirty blank surveys were delivered to Yankton Sioux Housing Authority, but none of those were returned.

A sample of 51 adult surveys was analyzed.  The following are the top issues of that group:

1)        Describe Wagner to a stranger:

          FRIENDLY & CULTURALLY FRIENDLY; GREAT SCHOOL SYSTEM

2)        What would make you more comfortable in our town?

          MORE POLICE, LESS CRIME

3)        What three things do you like best about Wagner?

 FRIENDLY, WAGNER LAKE & OTHER PARKS, SCHOOL & SCHOOL OPPORTUNITIES IT PROVIDES.

4)  What three things do you like least about Wagner?

          UNKEMPT PROPERTY, VANDALISM & GRAFFITI

5)  What are the three most important improvements Wagner needs in the next

      five years?

INDUSTRY, ASSISTED LIVING, MUNICIPAL POWER, CLEAN UP MAIN STREET, CLEAN UP THE SALE BARN, STOP LIGHT ON HIGHWAY 50.

This information can be found in the Community Strategic Plan, 2007, for Wagner, SD.  There is a great deal of other useful information that I will be posting as the weeks go on.  Please read and share your comments with me!!  Also, I would like to take pictures of items pertaining to our city and our future goals.  Please keep me posted if you see such things. 

Dawn Bures

Blog training took place in Tyndall on Thursday night at 7:00.

Blog training in Tyndall tonight. Very exciting!!!!!