Montrose, SD

Talk about the future of Montrose, just read these blogs from our 5th graders. I am so very proud of our young people, this is the reason we should all try and do everything we can to improve our community. We need to develop opportunities to allow these young men and women to stay here and become active members of the community. They have great ideas and need an outlet to express them, As possible Mayor of Montrose I intend to sit with them and garner there ideas and perhaps bring some of then into being. We need to get the entire community on board and listen to them and feed off their energy and improve conditions for the whole community. Not everyone reads these blogs, but, somehow everyone must be made aware of them and that we need their help if we want to grow. I would like to see comments. Tony

Someone recently posed a question to me concerning if my becoming a member of Horizons had anything to do with my running for the office of Mayor of Montrose, after thinking about it, I found that being a Horizon member had played a very large part in my running for office. I considered that being in a position of trust, with help from the the community we could make our town a better place for all. This community has a very great story to tell and we as members need to work together to keep our community vibrant and keep our young people from leaving, we can only accomplish this by forgetting the sometime pettiness of things that bother us and start thinking of how things were, how things are now, and how we want Montrose to become in the future. Montrose is a fine community to live in and raise a family, we have a very fine school, swimming pool, daycare center, parks, RV park, we have much to offer and now we must get the word out. WE ARE MONTROSE ON THE MOVE

Well day 1 of training is come and gone. Today was about how we should think outside the box. Start getting our young people thinking about how they could contribute to their communities. The youth of our communities are our secret weapon,get them involved and start to organize themselves and they will provide much needed ideas. The whole idea of HTC is based on 4 pillars these are Entrepreneurship, Transfer of Wealth, Youth and Leadership. Establishing an Entrepreneurial Development System or EDS. This system approach gets results by investing in people who have ideas. True entrepreneurs have ability to assemble a team and get people motivated. Tomorrow we will go into detail concerning the 4 pillars. Go Montrose………Tony

It’s been great to have some new faces–and new ideas–attending our strategic planning meetings. We need their input and fresh perspective. An example, Betty G. came and provided great input from the perspective of the school board. She also shared her passion for establishing a Montrose Community Foundation. That’s a wonderful idea that had not yet been shared. Kandi W. has information on possible funding assistance for a skate park. We’ll need that as we put down specific implementation steps for our community plan. And we had young people come to share their ideas of what they’d like to see in our community, and voice some of their concerns. We’re pleased that Horizons has provided a forum to share those dreams. Our next step is to come up with practical ways to implement them. Again, a thank you to everyone who is taking the time to contribute to this effort.

Our second planning meeting went very well.  After an excellent meal, we were ready to create our objectives for the goals that were set at the first planning meeting.  Our goals were written based on community input from the study circles, leadership training, and the kick-off event.  The goals for our Montrose community include:  To improve the appearance of Montrose, to encourage growth in Montrose, to provide more opportunities for all Montrose-area residents, and to promote community spirit.

Our community shown here is putting together the objectives to improve the appearance of our town.  Some of those objectives include improving the park area and picnic shelter, work toward the completion of the biking/walking trail, and exploring the possibilities of giving the main street of Montrose a “facelift” - including the removal of vacant buildings.

We look forward to expanding these goals and objectives to include the implementation procedures.  Working together, we will realize our goals!