Horizon II - Bison Celebration Event
Bison area residents have been working fervently for some time now. The results are starting to show. Our big Celebration Event was a success! The night was put together to share with community members, what the Bison Strategic Planning Committee has been up to. Members of this committee were well diversified with young adults, as well as young and older parents and teachers that included:
Heidi Collins, Mary Haggart, Teddi Carlson, Robert Drown, Lola Hedstrom, Jeff VanVactor, Rownea Gerbracht, Marcie Brownlee Kari, Brad Mackaben, Bert Lewton, Dennis Lewton, Tracy Collins, Samantha Gerbracht, Susan Carmichael, Kevin Weishaar, Dan Kvale and Todd Gerbracht. These people were assisted and guided by Carolyn Hendricks.
Well, the night started off with a wonderful meal of baked potato bar with all the toppers you might ever want. This meal was catered by a new local business called the “Main Street Bakery”. Afterwards, they got down to business.
- Brad Mackaben and Bob Drown presentedBison’s Strategic Community Plan
, which was given to each person in attendance as a booklet. The goals are identified as follows:
- Provide job opportunities for the Bison community.
- We see a need, in the Bison area for 2nd incomes in families. There are jobs that bring families to the area, but not a whole lot for their spouses.
- Provide adequate housing for the Bison area.
- There is the same need here. We have an influx of families, bu
t adequate housing is a necessity. - There has been some activity trying to help with this issue.
- There is the same need here. We have an influx of families, bu
- Develop and support community activities
- This is to help draw families in the Bison area together, and to give older children to young adults more activities to choose from.
- Develop an After School Program Committee to set up programs for kids K-6th grades.
- The thought behind this was to give younger kids in Bison more to do from when school gets out until parents can get off work, and spend quality time with their kids.
- Improve the appearance of Bison.
- Provide job opportunities for the Bison community.
- Carolyn Hendricks helped Rownea and Tonya by giving a promotional talk on Bison’s blog site. I do hope that more people will be interested in blogging. It is a great way to communicate ideas. And, to let people know what is happening in the community to make things better.
- Members of the Tri-Community Economic Enhancement from Isabel were present to provide words of inspiration to Bison. They were part of the first Horizons project in 2003, and have successfully completed the following projects since:
- securing a large grant to provide broadband service to Timber Lake
- established several new business
- established the Tri-Community Economic Enhancement
The night was not all business, there were also some door prizes. Since Bison is coming up on their Centennial in 2008. The Centennial Committee had a nice store of Centennial souvenirs to choose from for door prizes! What a great idea!
At the end of the meeting there were sign-up sheets for people to volunteer to help in taking the necessary steps to meet the goals that were listed in the Strategic plan.
If anyone else, that is reading this would like to help in any of these areas, and has not had the opportunity to sign-up please feel free to give me a jingle. Or just reply to this post.
I see some definite strides to make our community a better place to live. People are taking notice in what is going on in the community around them. They are taking an interest in wanting to change their community, and making it a better place to live. I see in the future more families wanting to move here and make Bison their permanent home.