Sisseton, SD

One of the goals in the Strategic Plan was to provide opportunities for people to promote tourism in the Sisseton area. On of the ways that we can build tourism is to have friendly, knowledgeable people working in our local businesses. A training was recently offered for high school students to learn more about serving the public.

We all want Sisseton to be an attractive, welcoming place. One of the Spring Sweep goals is to work on combating crime and graffiti. Several representatives of the city, city police department, probation officers, and concerned citizens have been meeting to come up with plans to help home and business owners deal with the problem of graffiti in our community.

Fresh Air Week is coming up! Horizons is working with the local radio station, KBWS to provide a week worth of radio ads to promote community pride, good attitudes and to continue the clean up efforts around town. The radio spots will also highlight some of the great assets that Sisseton has including parks, cultural attractions, businesses and the great people who call this place home.

Sisseton was part of the Design:SD project. Here’s some background from their website:

Design South Dakota is a newway to help rural communities create a better future by design. In April, 2008, a team of design and community development professionals will spend two intense days (called a design “charrette”) working with the people in the Sisseton, SD region to gather and illustrate local ideas. The event will help Sisseton to build a shared vision for the future, and to demonstrate ways to turn those ideas into reality in their regional community.

The completed concept boards will be delivered to the community soon and will probably be displayed somewhere in the community. More information to come…

Paint South Dakota is a community service program provided by the South Dakota Housing Development Authority. Each year community groups are encouraged to apply for the grant project. SDHDA provides primer and paint and a local community group provides the volunteer labor to paint the house. People can self nominate or can be chosen by a local group to participate. The requirements are:

1. The Nominee must own and currently live in the home to be painted. It cannot be a business, rental house, contain rental units or property used for other purposes besides a primary residence.

2. The Nominee must need their home repainted and would otherwise not be able to paint the house on their own due to financial or physical difficulty.

A group from Grace Lutheran Church will be painting a house in Sisseton this year. For more information or to get involved, contact Jeff Gregg.

The idea for the swap is to keep good, usable items out of the land fill and also to provide people in our community with free items that they can make use of. Lots of people were able to get rid of their C.R.U.D! (That’s Community Recycling of Usable Discards!)

This first swap was real success with 200+ items swapped and just a few things left over! There was everything from A to Z that people brought to swap including beds and bed frames, computers and scanners, bicycles, chairs, toilets, carpets, Christmas decorations, child booster and car seats and many other things! It’s amazing what people brought and what other people needed. It was a great event and more may be planned in the future.

Thanks to all who participated in the Swap, and thanks to Lindy Staub and the Sisseton Swimming Pool  for all their help in arranging the event and providing the space for the swap.

Horizons has partnered with the A & C Variety store to provide community residents with brooms and rakes at a discounted price. The project is meant to encourage people to take pride in their community and to promote shopping locally. Community members were encouraged to stop by A & C and pick up a broom or rake for just $2. We’ve already seen some community members out and about using their red handled brooms! Each person also received information about the Horizons projects and the action ideas being planned for the future to make Sisseton a great place for all its residents.

A BIG THANKS!to the folks at A & C for partnering with us to make this event a success!

Over 120 brooms will be delivered to Sisseton businesses as a way to say thanks for keeping Sisseton a clean, great place to live. The campaign is to encourage community businesses to take pride in their community and to lend a helping hand to make the community a clean, appealing place for the residents. We’ve heard a lot of good feedback from business owners, who were excited to accept the brooms and were grateful to be included as a valuable member of the community. The broms were provided as part fo the Horizons project and were the kick off to the 6 week Spring Sweep. The brooms are still being delivered, so if you haven’t gotten yours yet, don’t worry the Horizons group is still working.

As part of the follow up to the LeadershipPlenty portion of the Horizons project, the Horizons group created a survey to give to people at the 2007 Horse and Buggy Days. The group also had some Horizons water bottles created by Glacial Lakes Bottling to use as a marketing tool and to thank people for filling out the survey. To read the results of the surveys collected, click the link below:

2007-sisseton-community-needs-assessment.pdf

The information gathered will be used to create an action plan for Sisseton in the next phase of the Horizons project.  

We asked the Horizons participants to give us their feedback about how their community is changing in the areas of Poverty Reduction, Increasing Leadership and Community Change. The next few posts are the responses to questions about each of those topics…

How will your community make decisions about seeking further resources to support its plans?

• We will continue to meet and make decisions that will support our plans.
• Our community has been waiting for one large resource to bring in their ideas, and since that was last week, we can now go on by planning the next steps we want to take.

We asked the Horizons participants to give us their feedback about how their community is changing in the areas of Poverty Reduction, Increasing Leadership and Community Change. The next few posts are the responses to questions about each of those topics…

How can your community sustain the changes it has already made in its leadership?

• We can sustain the changes by supporting the people who stepped up, and are now leaders.
• Try to involve new people

We asked the Horizons participants to give us their feedback about how their community is changing in the areas of Poverty Reduction, Increasing Leadership and Community Change. The next few posts are the responses to questions about each of those topics…

In what new or expanded ways are people contributing to your community?

    I have seen many new people get involved over the last few months attending community improvement meetings that I haven’t seen in the past. It was always the same people attending all of the meetings so it is nice to see new faces with an outgoing attitude and new ideas offering some help and input.

What structures have been created or changed that will help your community?

    The addition of the Pamida store on E. Hwy 10 and the Dollar Store have been a nice additions to Sisseton. Hopefully with more retail stores, our community members will think twice before leaving town to shop and can do more of their shopping locally. The Middle School is officially closed and the new Middle School addition at the High School has been a good move I feel. The school has been very aggressive and continues to plan for the future with more additions. The remodel of the old church building on W. Hwy 10 into a restaurant has eliminated an eye sore for our Hwy 10 travelers and we look forward to them opening for business. The owners of the trailer part on E. Hwy 10 are emptying these lots by June 2008 which will be a great thing. This has turned into another eye sore for highway travelers and will be a great improvement once it is complete.

Written by Katy

We asked the Horizons participants to give us their feedback about how their community is changing in the areas of Poverty Reduction, Increasing Leadership and Community Change. The next few posts are the responses to questions about each of those topics…

What changes are you seeing in the way community leadership is exercised or carried out? 

• People who used to be “strong” leaders are now backing down a few steps to let other people step up to the plate and be a leader.

How is it different?

• Well it’s different because the people who you used to really count on, are still there, but they choose not to take on a very large responsibility.  It’s not that they don’t want it, but they are making the leadership position more spread out among community members/leaders.

 How has your community changed after LeadershipPlenty training? 

• People have come to realize what a leader actually does, and how many people in the community they can see as leaders. 
• Mostly it identified leaders within our community. 

In what ways have leadership skills been improved/enhanced? 

• I see more people being involved with community activities. 
• People are taking a risk and being a leader.

What is different? 

• We have more people as leaders now.

What changes are you seeing in the way leadership is carried out? 

• Like I said before, the “strong” leaders are not taking a few steps back, and sometimes they have a tendency to not voice their opinion.

How decisions get made in your community? 

• I see that everybody has a say in mostly everything that a community does, but some people are not willing to step out of their “comfort zone” and speak up.  As of right now, people are adjusting to the new leaders and someday they’ll voice their opinion.
• Some people are voicing their opinion.

What difference does the involvement of low income people make in community leadership?

• Involvement of low income people make community leadership different because they bring new ideas, one’s that a middle or upper class person might not have thought about.  
• They bring in more diversity because they represent mostly everybody.  Believe it or not!
• They also help bring about issues that are a very large concern to them, and maybe not a large concern to the middle or upper class.