Bison, SD

The Beautification Committee, led by Terry Hall is busy beautifying Main Street of Bison.  They are starting out by painting the old Municipal Bar building, and will then move across the street.  John Peck’s commercial building will be the next to benefit from a facelift.  These are 2 of the many projects Terry and his team of lined up for this spring and summer.  Other projects will include:  SD Paint projects, painting of another home in Bison, trimming trees and more.

Let me be the first to Salute Bison Horizons group and their beautification committee for these steps they have been taking.

The 4 Perkins County Master Gardeners (MG) are an outreach from the Extension Service Office. The 4 MGs are working on Community Garden project involving a half acre site at the fairgrounds. The purpose of the Community Garden is to makke available land to people of limited curcumstances for gardeninig. The Community Garden has been measured and mapped into plots of various sizes. A public meeting is planned for 7:00 p.m. Friday April 4 at the Bentley Building in Bison for those interested in renting plots. The MGs have made plans for installing a water pipeline to facilitate irrigation of the plots and have submitted a grant to help cover the costs.

Bison’s three committees are have come up with great projects and goals.  Beautification has come up with some painting projects for the town. Also, Terry has suggest having Mary Lee do some murals  on the main street businesses for centennial celebration.  That will really make an attractive scene. 

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:

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The 2nd of 3 Strategic Planning committee meetings met at the Main Street Bakery on Tuesday, November 13th at 5:00.  We completed our Vision and Mission Statements.  We had a very diverse group working together on our Vision and Mission Statements.  We wrote this to show what we envision Bison to be in 2008.  We also wrote our goals.  All this after a wonderful meal that was, again, provided by Theo Larson.

Mission Statement for Bison

The Horizons Strategic Planning Team is committed to the growth and development of the Bison area.  We will pursue our goals to improve the community and engage community members in a cooperative improvement effort, by linking local assets to the goals of our plan. We will consider the opinions of all community members and respect the views of all people to make the plan a reality.

Vision Statement for BisonThe Bison Community will be vibrant, thriving, progressive, attractive, and inviting.  Revenue generating businesses will provide an environment that maintains and improves the infrastructure and provides a foundation of sustainability for the community.  Programs and activities will be available for people of all ages.  We will provide a safe, beautiful community and support a quality family life which encourages the next generation to raise their families in the Bison area.    

Bison’s Strategic Goals

·        Develop and support community activities.

·        Develop an After School Program Committee to set up program for kids k-6th grade.

·        To provide job opportunities for the Bison Community. 

·        Improve the appearance of Bison.

Kevin Weishaar did a series of 4 weeks of training on how to create a web-site. I attended training sessions. He was very informative and helpful with everything from how to create a story-board, to taking pictures and uploading them to your web-page to making our videos more user-friendly on-line. He also set each of us up with a web-site of our own off of the Bison web-site. Kevin also sent us each home with some software to help us along the way.  All of this was done to help us get one step closer to bringing our community to the rest of the world.  One of our goals was to establish an Internet business (or call center).  In this goal, we hope to bring more jobs to the Bison area. 

Learning how to Blog today in Sturgis, SD. Hope to learn new & fun things to help our community to put Bison on the map!!

Tonya drove me down to Sturgis in her wonderful van. What a great person she is for volunteering to drive me anywhere I want to go. But, we ended up here…in Sturgis…at the extension office….learning how to blog from our wonderful Horizons group.