Mayor Calls Community Workshop

Mayor Linda Kadlec has called together a dozen civic groups from the community in an effort to identify and prioritize projects that are critical for Ritzville's survival.

Mayor Kadlec is hoping to bring the community together and create a unified effort toward revitalizing Ritzville. The Mayor plans to emphaize the need for teamwork.

The workshop planned for Monday, March 23rd is open to the public.

BBCC Hosts Luncheon

Dr. William Bonaudi, President of BBCC, will be hosting a luncheon on Wednesday, February 25th, at the American Legion Hall in Ritzville. Dr. Bonaudi will be presenting information about the services available through BBCC. After lunch he and four other staff members of BBCC will facilitate several small focus groups.

The focus groups are an effort to further define the need for secondary education in Ritzville and the surrounding communities of Lind and Washtucna. The luncheon and focus groups are a follow-up to the surveys circulated last summer.

The Ritzville PDA in partnership with the Ritzville Horizons group has proposed a distance learning center to be administered by BBCC. $10,000 in scholarship money is available for Ritzville students as soon as the center is open to the public.

Welcome to our town??

Ritzville has always been known as Eastern Washington's best kept secret. We'd like to change that. The Ritzville Public Development Authority (PDA) is hoping to do just that. Washington State University's Interdisciplinary Design Institute (WSU IDI) will present four proposed solutions to our signage and identity problem.

On Friday, December 12, the WSU IDI students will present their ideas to the community. Everyone is invited to attend. We are hoping to have a good group of community members present to stimulate some dialog.

By inviting visitors to our community and making them feel welcome when they get here, it is the hope of the PDA to stimulate some economic development opportunities.

Come join in the discussion. Be a part of the solution.

Ritzville Horizons Final Action Plan Approved!

The Ritzville Horizons strategic plan has been approved by the Northwest Area Foundation. CONGRATS Ritzville on this success! I hope you will all join me in thanking your local Horizons steering committee for their tenacity and involvement in this project over the past 18 months. Those dedicated, volunteer leaders are: Debbie Chapman, Dorothy Grove, & Ann Olson!

Thanks also to our partners who have helped in a variety of ways – Carol Simonson, Ritzville Area Chamber of Commerce, the Ritzville Public Development Authority board, and the City of Ritzville.

The full report is available at http://horizons.wsu.edu/HorizonsCommunityInfo/documents/RitzvilleStrategicPlan0620.doc

Again, I applaud all who helped with Horizons and three cheers to Ann, Dorothy, & Debbie!!!
Monica
Ritzville Horizons Coach

Hospitality Training

Sue Price presented her hospitality training to over 40 eager citizens of Ritzville and Lind this past week. She came early and did some secret shopping. Ritzville received some good and some not so good comments. The critiques were well received by the attendees.

As evidenced by the amount of conversation in the parking lot, everyone went home energized and ready to create their WOW moments for Ritzville's visitors.

Inland Northwest Partners

Debbie Chapman, Dorothy Grove, and John Marshall from Ritzville's Horizons group attended the Inland Northwest Partners meeting in Post Fall on June 11 with Ritzville's Coach and INWP Board Member, Monica Babine.

Over 50 Horizons members were in attendance coming from Washington and Idaho.

Sprague's group was among the presentors. Good job Sprague!!

Ritzville's Dorothy Grove created a story board and brochures highlighting Ritzville's activities thus far. Together with Debbie Chapman, they fielded questions from the attendees.

Horizons Meeting Notes - May 30, 2008

Ritzville Horizons Meeting Notes
DRAFT
May 30, 2008
Grove Home

Participants:
Debbie Chapman Karen Cady
Dorothy Grove Monica Babine

We welcomed Karen Cady to our meeting today. Karen is a friend of Debbie’s and is doing some business in the Ritzville area.

Since our May 15 meeting, Ann has been updating the blog – which we appreciate very much. Dorothy shared several items she thought would be good to include in the blog post section of the strategic report. We discussed the need to finalize the plan by June 16. Both Debbie and Dorothy asked for copies of the interim strategic plan – it will be emailed to them. We may use email to gather additional information to include in the plan.

Both Debbie and Dorothy plan to attend the Inland NW Partners meeting on June 11. Information about the session has been sent to the Mayor and is in the City Council packets. After the Council meeting on Tuesday, June 3, we will determine who else to invite to fill the 5 registration slots available from Horizons. Dorothy is working on the tabletop display for the meeting and is gathering photos from the Journal and Debbie.

Preparations are underway for the Sue Price trainings on June 25 and 26. In addition to the article in the Journal on May 15 about the sessions, the Chamber has developed and distributed flyers around town. Carol Simonson, from the Chamber is also extending personal invitations and working with the Journal to run an ad. Carol asked for help from the Horizons committee regarding catering orders. Debbie will coordinate with Carol on this and possibly an ice cream social which was discussed earlier. Carol may need to be out of town so she would like to have someone from the committee at each event. Assistance includes being at the church early each day to make sure lights are on, the room has chairs, caterers can set up and Sue can get in early to prepare for the session. We also need to have a sign-in sheet at each event to turn into the Horizons staff. Debbie said she planned to be there on the 25th. We need someone to help on the 26th also. Dorothy will be out of town both days so she can not assist.

Under New Business we talked about several activities that we could do during the next month since we have almost $2000 in our Horizons budget. Ideas included a field trip to Port Hadlock and/or other distance learning centers; offering scholarships to the pool for low-income families; support for families with disabilities; and holding a community clean-up day. We spent some time brainstorming about the clean-up event. It was thought that this would be a good follow-up activity to the “clean up” letters recently sent out by the City. Dorothy agreed to talk with her husband, Dave, about doing this because of his role at the City. We discussed holding it either on June 14 or 21 from 8 am-noon, followed by hot dogs in the park. This would be a partnership activity and would involve asking churches, scouts, 4H, etc. to help out. We would need to develop a sign-up system both for volunteers and those who want help in their yard. In addition to food expenses, we might also need to use some of our funds for transporting items to the dump. An option would be to have this be our Horizons celebration too. There are a few “graduation” questions the NW Area Foundation would like us to gather input on and we could do that at this event. If we decide to do this we need to have a conference call the first week of June to plan it.

Monica provided an up date from the Horizons staff. Several Horizons communities are considering developing Horizons signage like those for All-American City, etc. Our group thought a plague that could be mounted on the distance learning/resource center would be a better fit for Ritzville. Monica announced that the NWAF plans to fund 15 new Horizons communities in Washington. It does not appear they will offer funding for “alumni” communities such as Ritzville. WSU however, is looking at potential resources to continue supporting alumni communities. We talked about other partners that may be able to continue Horizons related activities. Monica asked the group about local Extension office involvement. Several items were mentioned such as workshops/trainings for family and household management, canning, emergency preparedness, financial planning, bullying issues, as well as creation of a resource directory and/or bulletin board with community information, services, etc. We also discussed the partnerships that have already been developed during Horizons with Chamber, RPDA, City of Ritzville, WSU IDI and Big Bend Community College (BBCC). Several ideas were shared about classes that could be offered by BBCC – customer service, work ethic, continuing ed, etc. It might be a good idea for someone from BBCC to attend the Sue Price training. Police, sheriff, hospitals might also be good partners.

Debbie plans to follow up with Cecil Andrews, a speaker she heard at the Green Festival in Seattle. She presented on ways to simplify your life. No decision was made about how/if we would involve Cecil Andrews but we look forward to hearing what Debbie learns about her work.

I next meeting was not set but we will be scheduled via email.


Monica Babine
WSU Horizons Coach

Partnership with Sprague Horizons to Include Support for Families with Disabled Members

Debbie Chapman, Ritzville Horizons Steering Committee member, has been working with a group from the Sprague Horizons team to establish a parent group for those with disabled family members. In addition to networking and support, they hope to help identify training and other resources. This effort will help families with limited access to support services and may help to reduce physical, support system and financial poverty.

Ritzville has a new coach!!

Monica Babine from WSU's Center to Bridge the Digital Divide has been named as Ritzville's new coach for the Horizons project.

Monica has worked with Ritzville for several years. Her knowledge of the community will help her come up to speed quickly.

The steering committee met with Monica on May 15th and will meet again on May 30th. Anyone interested in attending may contact Dorothy Grove at 659-4309.

Welcome back Monica!!

May 15, 2008

Ritzville Horizons Meeting Notes
DRAFT
May 15, 2008
Ritzville City Hall

Participants:
Debbie Chapman Ann Olson
Dorothy Grove Monica Babine

After introductions we discussed why each member got involved in Horizons, who they want Horizons to help, and what they are hoping to do or accomplish during the program. For each member, initial involvement was at the request of another local leader. A community “win” – successfully completing Horizons – was discussed as an important need in the community. The conversation also included hopes for employment (good jobs and good employees), leadership training, community development, and improving the community attitude (from negative to positive).

We reviewed Horizons efforts to-date and in some cases learned about activities not previously known to the whole team. We did discuss some of the challenges of the program (i.e., order of program elements, confusion over survey zip codes, visioning session). No one had seen the interim strategic plan until just recently and felt communication seemed to have dropped off along the way. The conversation also noted the portions of the program that seemed most successful and/or helpful (i.e., leadership training content, partnering with chamber).

There was consensus that the group wanted to finish the program. Since Horizons is a poverty reduction and human capital development program, we talked about how to best use the Community Capacity Building Funds given that the community resource/distance learning center is a project the team wants to continue working on. Debbie asked if scholarships for classes would be an acceptable use and we discussed how that along with other items such as transportation and child/elder care might be helpful resources. This seemed like a win-win idea for both providing training availability for community members in poverty and also helping the center be successful in filling classes.

Although we ran out of time and did not cover everything on our agenda, we did get a good start on discussing items that need to be completed including:
Updating the blog with previous activities and keeping it current (Ann said she could help with this and Debbie has pictures to include.)
Completing the final strategic plan
Completing and submitting the application for Community Capacity Building Funds
Determining who will attend the Inland NW Partners meeting from Ritzville
Developing a Ritzville Horizons display for the Inland NW Partners meeting (Dorothy will do)
Identifying any other events to be complete in the next couple months (i.e., Sue Post workshops, attending the Big Idea, or visiting a distance learning center, doing something related to the needs of the disabled, holding a celebration, etc.)

It will be important to get together again soon to continue efforts. In addition, there is a need for ongoing communication and assistance with details regarding each item above. This will be accomplished via email, face-to-face meetings, and telephone.


Monica Babine
WSU Horizons Coach

What's Your Dream for Ritzville

New Mayor, Linda Kadlec, has challenged the community to share their dream for Ritzville. Some really great dreams have been submitted. The Journal has printed many of the dreams and will continue to do so as long as they keep coming in.

What's your dream? Submit all of your dreams to the Ritzville Chamber of Commerce, City of Ritzville, or the Journal.

Together we can make a difference.

"If you don't have a dream, how ya gonna make a dream come true?"

Strengthening Communities

I hope you've saved Thursday for lunch together.

The next Strengthening Communities Forum will be at the Ritzville High School Library on Thursday, 2. 28.08, from noon to 1:00 pm.

The lunch topic is around empowering today's volunteers. Let's think of new ways to attract volunteers .

Bring your sack lunch and bring a friend; treat yourself to time to think about ways to strengthen your community organization.

Ritzville Horizons and Chamber Partner for Christmas Celebration and Visioning

A great family-friendly time was enjoyed by 130 community members to celebrate the holiday season. Thank you to the Chamber for partnering on these festivities! Following the party, a Horizons visioning session was held where it was detrmined that a strategy of "community education, life-long learning twoard a vital economy and competent workforce through the development of a community learning center" would help address Ritzville's poverty reduction and community prosperity needs.

Ritzville Survey Preliminary Report

The top 3 areas of concern expressed by those returning surveys that were mailed to every household in the Ritzville zip code:

#1 Better/More Jobs
#2 Youth Activities
#3 Improved Economy


On October 27 at the Circle T Restaurant community members could provide ideas to meet these concerns. Following are those ideas. Nov 30 will be the next opportunity for ideas from community members, and that evening participants will create a strategic plan to address those items selected.

#1 More/Better Jobs

• Be willing to change; more open minded to new things
• We need to promote the quality of life to be expected in living here. If potential employers want to live here bad enough, they will bring jobs with them.

#2 Youth Activities

• We have so many vacant store fronts, open one to be a youth center with pingpong, foosball, video games, etc.
• tennis court, handball court, soccer field
• training opportunities & scholarship opportunities to return to the community upon graduation

#3 Improve Economy

• Welcome newcomers to community so they are willing to state and make this their home.
• Retail downtown needs to be concentrated even in one block so the businesses can build off each other.
• More things to do will keep tourists here longer.

What one project should Ritzville undertake?

• Skateboard park
• Downtown public restrooms (visitors need these)
• Signage to direct people to downtown
• Pea Patch program (community garden)
• Hospitality Training
• Resource Center - brochure

Link to the full survey report

The check is in the mail!!!

The check isn't in the mail but the surveys are. If you read last week's Journal, you know that a survey will be coming to you soon. Don't throw it away. Fill it out and send it back. Your voice is needed and appreciated. Each and every member of the household (excluding pets) is encouraged to fill out a survey. Feel free to make copies as needed. If you need an extra survey, copies are at the Library, City Hall, and Chamber office. An exciting event is being planned to present the survey results to the community. You won't want to miss out.