St. James, MN

The Community Coffee is going to start in earnest in September, but we are still looking for topics to discuss, starting with the new school building proposal. If you need some help with ideas, here are some of my favorite community-building web sites:

• MPR’s The Future of Small Towns Idea Generator - http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/projects/2005/04/smalltowns/
(People, Economic Opportunity, Human Services, Telecommunications, Transportation, Social/Cultural Opportunities, Education, Government, Other. Challenge: find Dave Stordalen’s and Mark Anderson’s posts)
• Project For Public Spaces - Building Community, Creating Places, Using Common Sense - http://www.pps.org/
(Parks, Transportation, Civic Centers, Public Markets, Downtowns, Mixed-Use Development, Campuses, Squares, Waterfronts)
• Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation - http://www.smifoundation.org/
(Grants, Community, Business, Voices, Early Childhood, Bio-Industry, Asset-Based Community Development)

• The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation - http://www.theharwoodinstitute.org/

Other Places To Get Ideas:
• BetterTogether - http://www.bettertogether.org/
• Center For Rural Policy and Development - http://www.mnsu.edu/ruralmn/
• Local Initiatives Support Corporation - http://www.lisc.org/
• Heartland Center for Leadership Development - http://www.heartlandcenter.info/
• New Rules Project - Designing Rules As If Community Matters - http://www.newrules.org/
• Institute For Local Self-Reliance - http://www.ilsr.org/
• Local Government Commission - a nonprofit organization working to build livable communities - http://www.lgc.org/
(Community Design, Economic Development, Energy, Environment, People & Community, Transportation, Waste Prevention)
• Boomtown USA - http://boomtownusa.blogspot.com/
• National Trust Main Street Center - http://www.mainstreet.org/
• The City Repair Project - http://www.cityrepair.org
• Seven Revolutions - http://www.7revs.org
• Community Development Foundation - http://www.cdf.org.uk/
• World Changing - Change Your Thinking - http://www.worldchanging.com/
• The Minnesota Design Team - http://www.minnesotadesignteam.org/
• The Dialogue Project - Building Community Through Dialogue - http://www.thedialogueproject.org/
• COMM-ORG - The Online Conference on Community Organizing and Development - http://comm-org.wisc.edu/
• Freakonomics - The Hidden Side of Everything - http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/
• Heartland Center for Leadership Development - http://www.heartlandcenter.info/
• Rural Policy Research Institute - http://www.rupri.org/
• Governing Magazine - http://www.governing.com/
• Wiser Earth - http://wiserearth.org/

• Northwest Area Foundation - http://www.nwaf.org/

Add Your Own:

The final meeting with our helpers from Horizons was held Monday, June 2.  We didn’t get as many people as we had hoped, perhaps because of graduation weekend, but the people who did attend got a good wrap-up of all the various projects Horizons has implemented.  Even those who admitted they were weary from the weekend enjoyed the meal and became good participants in the discussions at the end of the meeting.

Two great things happened near the end of the meeting that will give Horizons momentum going into the summer.  First was the announcement of a Community Coffee that will be held every Friday at the Community Building (behind the Princess Theater) at 9 a.m.  It will be the first weekly, open, public, community-building conversations ever to be held in St. James.  That’s a lot of adjectives, but there’s a lot of possibilities in the coffee.

The second is the Horizons quilt.  Donna Koch brought cloth strips and asked everyone to write a positive message on them, so they can be sewn into a quilt.  With the quilt and the new Horizons St. James banner, we will be able to assemble an impressive display.

Click here for your own personal copy of the Directory:

Watonwan County Resource Directory

The first Horizons money requests were granted at the Leadership Team meeting on Tuesday. The Education Future Squad will get $750 for interpreter services for Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) classes. The classes are being held by the Good Samaritan community in May, June and July.

The other grant was $500 to the Green Team Future Squad to get their names on the reusable shopping bags that are going to be sold at grocery stores and around town. Besides being environmentally friendly, the project is a social contribution because the proceeds from selling the bags will go to a scholarship fund for low-income students.

This money comes out of the first $1,500 payment from the Northwest Area Foundation (the parent of Horizons) to St. James. Another $8,500 will be coming upon the completion of the Horizons program.

The March newsletter from Project for Public Spaces contains a checklist titled “Is Your City a Great City?”

St. James still needs to do some work to check off all of the items, but some of the Horizons projects are doing this work.

Another community-building resource is coming to St. James, but pay attention to see how it works.

The Northwest Area Foundation funds Horizons, which is run by the University of Minnesota Extension service. Another program of Northwest Area Foundation is called “Creating a Value Added Community” (CVAC). Both Horizons and CVAC are designed to reduce poverty in rural areas.
Now CVAC has teamed up with the Madelia Model to bring the CVAC program and the Madelia Model bioenergy projects to the communities surrounding Madelia. The CVAC portion is being implemented by Renewing the Countryside. One goal is to incorporate existing community programs like Horizons and Bridging Brown County, so that we are all working together on a regional level.

The next meeting will be Tuesday, March 25, from 1-4 p.m. at the St. James Library, because they want to move the meetings around. They are looking for more people to get involved and learn how to Create a Value Added Community. To get involved, contact Linda Meschke at Rural Advantage.

Less than one year into the program, Horizons has sparked many projects and meetings in St. James.  A Horizons Leadership Team meeting on Monday, February 18, gave updates on several of the projects.
One of the central goals to come out of the Horizons community visioning meeting in October was to have all the St. James arrows pointed in the same direction.  That meant getting people and community groups working on common goals, rather than each person or group working on different groups.
For that purpose, the Unity/ Diversity/ Working Together Future Squad will have their organizational meeting on Thursday, Feb. 28, from 5:15 to 7:00, First Presbyterian Church.
The group will also invite members of the Unity/Unidad committee, which has not met for several months.  The meeting will be to brainstorm and come up with ideas for the Unity Future Squad.
Other Horizons projects updated were:
• The  community vision and vision statement threshold was met, with more than 600 people in St. James commenting on the Horizons vision.
• Bus shelter - a $2,000 donation from Tony Downs was announced to go toward the first project.
• More bloggers are wanted for the St. James community blog, stjames.communityblogs.us.
• Home repair classes are scheduled for May.
• Green Team Future Squad is planning to put up a display in the St. James Library, and work with schools on an Earth Day project.

Based on discussions at St. James Green Team Future Squad meetings, Mark Anderson drew up the following green vision for St. James. This is meant to be a preliminary discussion of what a green St. James would look like, so please add any comments or suggestions. If you would like to become part of the Green Team, contact Jill Henderson at Wilcon or Mark Anderson at the St. James Plaindealer.

Green Team vision:

Recycling
Short term goals:
• Support Youth Council projects, support city-wide recycling.

Long term goals:
• Reduce the need for recycling by promoting reusable containers.
• Begin recycling building materials.

End goal:
• Have a recycling center in St. James.
Could be for anything or everything: containers, paper, electronics, batteries, all building materials …

Energy Conservation / Reduce Consumption
• Promote energy-saving light bulbs, Energy Star appliances, and other household energy saving practices.

• Reduce the use of air conditioning in the summer, and winterize homes to reduce heating costs.
• Promote use of reusable grocery and shopping bags.
Land Use
Short term goals:
• Start working with the Madelia Model to explore bringing a bio-energy industry to St. James. The Madelia Model combines natural prairie plantings with the latest technologies, such as pyrolisis and gasification. It also works with existing industry to use waste or excess heat to produce electricity.

Long term goals:
• Wind generators
• Locally-produced food
• We implement the Madelia Model so thoroughly that it becomes known as the St. James Model:
-All farmland near streams and ditches will be prairie grassland, eliminating much agricultural runoff.
-All St. James industries will find ways to reuse waste, excess heat, or other by-products to create energy.

End goal:
• Through wind, bioenergy, and solar conversion, St. James will produce more energy than it uses. We will have vast swaths of natural prairie along our waterways, sandy soil and sloped land, which will be used not just for energy, but for hunting, fishing, hiking, birdwatching, education, and science.
Education
Short term goals:
• Put the St. James Green Team logo on environmentally friendly products in stores or projects around town.
• Get schools more involved in environmental teaching, like a district-wide Earth Day project.
• Set up a “Green Corner” at the library, with Green Team materials and pertinent books and magazines.
• Work with the schools to find a “No Child Left Inside” project.

Long term goals:
• A majority of St. James people and businesses will implement new sustainable practices.
• Build nature areas into the school playgrounds so children have daily access to nature.
• Schools will put environmental science and environmental projects into curriculum.

End goal:
• All St. James decisions will be made with a 100-year or more basis in mind.
• Every school will have large nature areas for daily access to nature. The Northside/ High school campus will still have beautiful athletic fields, but there will be nature trails running around them. There will be a permanent nature trail leading to the Meadowlark Environmental Learning
Green building
Short term goals:
• Get green building projects started in St. James, using the Minnesota Green Communities, Green Playbook, or other programs.
• When building, the people of St. James will look at lifetime costs rather than up-front costs.

Long term goals:
• Area buildings will be filled with strong insulation, energy-efficient heating systems, native landscaping, and nearby access to nature trails.
• More construction people in St. James will become LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified.
• Building centers will sell more green products and natural building materials.
• Green Team will expand to projects for a green lifestyle: green transportation, green design, green banking, green retailers, green clothing…

End goal:
• Transform from green building to a green city. All St. James neighborhoods will be energy-efficient and built with natural materials. Neighborhoods will be planned for social health, environmental health and economic health for the whole city, not just for one household.
• A greenway will run around and through St. James, connecting parks, allowing for hiking, biking and daily access to nature, no matter what neighborhood you live in.
Other Green Team projects:

• Do an Earth Day project (April 22)
• Get educational videos made for public access TV

This agrees with the “Mailbox: St. James” post below. Jack Schultz of Boomtown USA
has listed his top trends in 2008. He travels the country to look for small town economic success, and his number one trend in 2008 is:

1. Millennials-This generation, ages 10 to 27, dwarfs the Baby Boomers in size. These young people are going to be the most entrepreneurial in the history of the USA. I’m finding incredible examples of what these young people are already doing. You need to be recruiting and retaining the Millennials.

The more I hear, the more it makes sense. One of the first goals of the Horizons Youth Future Squad should be a program to retain youth in our town.

Update: the article linked is no longer on the web, but click it to get a different story about a different town.

Anyone interested in retaining St. James youth has got to read this. Brookfield, Missouri, exactly the same size as St. James (4,700), started a plan to give each graduating student a mailbox to let students know that they will always have a home in Brookfield.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. They also started a $250,000 community foundation and a bunch of other stuff. It’s like a blueprint of what St. James is talking about in the Horizons discussions. Read the story by clicking here.