Our Anamoose Area Community Foundation met yesterday to plan for our fund raising. Amy Warnke, ND CommunityFoundation Development Director, gave us more information on how to raise the $25,000 needed for the first year.
Pictured are: Bill Goodwin, Dennis Zimmerman, Shirley Nitz, Brent Weninger, Dick 
Hauser, Amy Warnke, Joe Weninger, and Alyce Heer. (Rose Weninger is taking the picture)
The city and City Board have a big decision to make-whether to fix up our existing water plant or go with the Rural Water Consortium. At the Informational meeting Tuesday night the engineers reported it would could $312,000 to fix up the water system to new condition and it may last 20 years. We have trouble with the arsenic level in our water, so chemicals have to be added to keep the arsenic below 10.
The city has a $246,000 outstanding debt now on the water system.
If we don’t sign up with rural water now it will cost more to sign up later or we may not even be able to sign up. The Rural Water representative said the average cost for rural water is $49.50 a month plus approximately $4-$5 per 1000 gallons.
Butch Ehrman who lives 3 miles south of Anamoose told me that he pays a base of $41 a month and $4.91 per 1000 gallons for rural water that comes from the south.
A USDA representative reported there is a possibility of a grant/loan for either renovation or joining the Rural Water Consortium. He advised the City Board to raise the water rates no matter what they decide to do.
We crammed a lot of planning into one and a half hours when our Steering Committee met yesterday at the cafe. We worked through our Strategic Plan.
Under the category of Improve Business Climate in Anamoose we have 7 strategies. Under the category of Adequate and Affordable Housing we have 4 strategies. With our Communications category we are working on 7 strategies. We just put together a Welcome package (see previous blog by Mardi) Our goal to Promote Tourism has 7 strategies. The biggest projects under tourism are putting together a brochure, and planning for the wedding of Joe and Ana-Moose on Saturday, June 28th. You will hear alot more about the wedding in our future blogs. Developing Future Leaders has 3 strategies for youth and adults alike. The goal of a Clean Anamoose Community includes everything from old buildings, signs, cars, our park, to diseased trees. We couldn’t forget the elderly in our plan where we have 7 strategies. And on the opposite end of the spectrum we want to keep our young people in Anamoose by including them in our plans.
Under the category of Home Rule, we have put together a Home Rule Charter that will be distributed to all households, a public meeting will be held, and a vote will be held in June.
And finally, we are setting up a Community Endowment Foundation that will be started with our $10,000 from the Horizons program.
We have a lot to do yet!
Pictures left to right are: Mardell Helm, Alyce Heer, Dennis Zimmerman, Bill Goodwin, 
Joe Weninger, Bonnie Dockter, and Shirley Nitz.