Anamoose, ND

Brent Weninger, president of the Harvey Eagles Club, presented donations to the Anamoose Senior Center, Anamoose Fire Department and the Anamoose Area Community Foundation.  The Senior Center plans to use their money for a much needed larger T.V., &  the Fire Department will  use their money for training materials.  The Community Foundation will use the money towards reaching their goal of $10,000 for 2010. 

 We are grateful to the Eagles Club for this consideration and their generosity.

Pictured are: 1.  Brent Weninger giving check to Phyllis Zimmerman, president Anamoose Senior Center.  2.  Brent Weninger (right) giving check to Mike Rudnick, secretary/treasurer of the Anamoose Fire Dept. 

Last night Janice Buchholz & I went to an informational Horizon’s meeting in McClusky.  We gave a power point presentation on what we had done in Anamoose under the Horizon’s program.  Patti Patrie also presented what Bowden had done.  McClusky did decide to join the new Horizon’s session that starts this fall. 

It’s a little early yet with this cold weather for garden vegetables.  But we had some vendors at our Farmer”s Market Monday evening.  We hold it Monday evenings as the VFW has Bingo at 8pm. 

I found a great idea when I visited the Gackle blog site.  Gackle, ND will be adding a Summer Arts Program “Capture the Coteau” to their Farmer’s Market.  They will “look at all the wild life and Flora which surrounds Gackle, study it, draw it, sculpt it, photograph it, and then use it to adorn banners, planters, benches, or what ever we can think of to help us beautify the town”.   Go to gackle.communityblogs.us   to learn more about this program and the grant they received. 

Usually when I go to Minot I am lucky if I see a couple of people that I know, but yesterday at the annual Verendrye meeting there were many people from Anamoose and other area communities.  Maybe the free meal and a chance to win $3000 attracts us!  I didn’t win the money, and nobody won the $3000 either. 

They had many interesting vendors, with four from our Anamoose area, and one from McHenry County.  This is a good way to promote our small businesses & our county.  Booths pictured are: 1.  Deb Reinowski-Park Lane jewelry  2.  Keith Reinowski-Midwest Graphics & Signs. Also Angie Mack, Brenda Kenney, & Kristin Reinowski.  3.  Jackie Fix & Brad Mincher-Sage Hill Bed & Breakfast  4.  Mabel Forschen-Home made gifts & Watkins.  5.  Maria Effertz Hanson-McHenry County   Also there were people there like Shirley & Bill Nitz who were there just to enjoy the food, etc. 

Another of our Horizon goals has come about.  Woody and Kathy Selzler purchased land next to them that was called “the stockyards”.  They have been getting rid of old buildings and trees, and put part of the land into a community garden.  Anamoose area residents can put in a garden at no cost.  USDA is offering free seeds for a study on new varieties.  If anyone is interested please contact Bonnie Dockter at 465-3088. 

Several Anamoose Horizon Board members brought out their paint brushes today and brightened up the front of the former grocery store that now stands vacant waiting for a new tenant.  Members on the painting team were: Alyce Heer, Janice Buchholz, Joe Weninger, Bonnie Dockter and Mardelle Helm.  One Anamoose resident, Rudy Wohl, came to check out the job while the work was being done.  Sorry Bonnie - bad photographer!

Just wanted to put together a few pictures from the last few months in Anamoose to practice how to make a picture album and to get it on this blog site. 

Its not the residents that are buzzing, but, saws and other equipment being used by Feist Plumbing of Harvey and Ron Bartz Carpentry to replace and repair water lines in most of the apartments.  Funding is provided by grant money from the city of Anamoose through Souris Basin Planning Council and the Housing Corporation. Pictured are Ron Bartz  in a hallway and Tim Feist and Ron Bartz in a vacant apartment.

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.

Who wants to cook on Sunday?  Not me, and not a lot of other people who turned out yesterday for the Senior Center brunch of french toast and sausage.  Chairman Dennis Zimmerman and Bill Goodwin had lots of help from the women with serving and clean-up. 

This was the third Sunday brunch-the second one at the Senior Center, and one last week at the Anamoose Cafe.  The churches have helped to advertise the brunches in their bulletins and we also have been advertising on our marque on main street. 

Many of the crowd had left before I remembered to take pictures, but some enjoyed sitting around drinking coffee and visiting. 

At 27 below I don’t think there would be too many people wanting to go ice skating today.  For this winter we don’t even have a skating rink, but plans are in place for one next year.

The Albrecht family has donated their lot north of the Lutheran Church parking lot to the city to be used for a skating rink.  (see picture)

The warming house on main street sets next to the new fire hall that was built on the skating rink lot.  The city board discussed that they will move it to the new lot so next winter our youth ( and maybe a few older) will be able to skate again.  This is one of our goals in our Strategic Plan. 

Last night we had our annual Quad County Economic Development meeting at the Whistle Stop Cafe in Drake. 

We are loaning Darryl Keller money to open the Shani”s Bar in Drake. 

Maria Effertz Hanson, McHenry Co. JDA Director, spoke on the benefits of living in ND.  She referred to the article in the January issue of National Geographics, The Emptied Prairie, where they said ND is litered with dead towns.  Many ND people, including me, wrote in to let them know what we thought of the article.  We have a lower population in ND than a lot of states, but we have a lot of positives.  To view the article go to:  http://abcnews.go.com/search?searchtext=north%20dakota&type  

We just got home from eating a buffet breakfast at the Anamoose Cafe.  What a huge crowd, as you can see in the pictures!  The breakfast was delicious  Over breakfast, we talked about how it is great to be able to eat Sunday breakfast in Anamoose before or after church. 

Next Sunday we can eat breakfast at the Anamoose Senior Center, when they serve their second Sunday breakfast from 9:30-1. 

This was one of our Strategic Planning goals-to have Sunday meals for seniors.  I am sure the rest of the people in Anamoose enjoy it too. 

Our Anamoose Area Community Foundation met last night with Kevin Dvorak, ND Community Foundation president, for an organizational meeting.  We started planning on how to get our $25,000 goal for the  year.  Our $10,000 that we will be getting from the Horizons program is a good start. 

From left around the back of the table are:  Kevin Dvorak, Brent Weninger, Rose Weninger, Joe Weninger, Bill Goodwin (behind), Calvin Buxa, Dennis Zimmerman, Shirley Nitz. 

This morning we were discussing the Anamoose Foundation over coffee at the cafe.  Suddenly one woman got up, got her checkbook, and made out a donation.   That made my day!

One of our goals in our Strategic Plan was to be able to eat out in Anamoose at least one to two Sundays a month.

The Anamoose Senior Citizens served the first breakfast on Sunday, January 6th.  The crowd seemed to enjoy the pancakes and sausage-and visiting.  A couple of Pastor Olson’s family had to have eggs instead of sausage when the sausage run out.  We talked of ordering an extra 5 lbs when we have sausage again. As you can see we have lots of help

in the kitchen. We plan to serve again Sunday, February 3rd. 

The cafe plans to serve a breakfast on Sunday, January 27th.

Pat McIntosh (left) from Castle Rock, WA, sent us our first donation of $25 for our Anamoose Endowment fund.  Dorothy Leier (right) sent her aunt one of our christmas letters that tells how we are putting our $10,000 that we will receive from the Horizon’s program.  The letter is on our Anamoose web site, http://www.anamoose.com/   The endowment fund will provide us with a method of receiving funds/donations to benefit projects in Anamoose. 

A couple weeks ago 8 of us met to began organizing a Home Rule Charter for Anamoose.  The members of the committee(Double click on picture) are Angie Kesler, Lois Rott, Dennis Zimmerman,Steve Heim, Jeff Lemer, Brent Weniger, Duaine Dockter,  and I(talking picture).  They looked relaxed, but we had just finished a couple of hours reviewing a Sample Home Rule Charter and comparing it to Drake and Velva’s Charters.

I took the following quote from the ND League of Cities Handbook on Home Rule, August, 2007.  “Home Rule is a granting of certain powers to cities by the state legislature to allow cities more opportunity to make decisions about those issues that affect them.”

 A Home Rule Charter would allow the city board to budget more effectively and also allow for a city sales tax should this be approved by the voters. 

Friday I was told by Bill Goodwin, McHenry County Commissioner, that Anamoose has not renewed the sherriff contract with the county.  I contacted Joe Weninger (picture), Anamoose City Council member, about this.  He replied,”The funding isn’t available to be able to support the deputy contract.  The tax dollars we take in basically support ouor street lighting-and that’s about it.”

The next Home Rule committee meeting will be Thursday, January 10 with Jerry Hjelmstad, lawyer for the League of Cities.