Tag:Culver
It’s You Art Gallery Grand Opening
The Culver Chamber of Commerce is having a ribbon cutting for the new It’s You! Art Gallery today at noon. Please consider coming to show support and welcome this new business to the community!
Living History Exhibit
A while back I wrote about my grandfather being interviewed by students from the Weidner School of Inquiry regarding his service in World War II. The exhibit at the Marshall County Museum that resulted from this is open. This is a flyer for the Open House a couple of weeks ago. That’s my grandfather as the poster boy for the event! Unfortunately my grandfather was recovering from double pneumonia at the time and didn’t get to attend. Stop by and check it out. My grandfather turned 100 this year. There are not many WWII veterans still around. We need to learn from them and remember them.
Culver Comp Plan Implementation Meeting
As a partial rebuttal to my own post yesterday, I attended the Culver Comprehensive Plan Implementation Meeting on Tuesday night. This meeting was held at the Depot and was part of Houseal Lavigne‘s contract for preparing the Comprehensive Plan. Several of us on the initial comprehensive plan steering committee requested that this be included in hopes that the seed would be planted with Town officials on why the plan needs to be a reference document and not something just completed and set aside on a shelf.
Here’s the partial rebuttal part… The Town Council, Plan Commission, Redevelopment Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals as well as the original Steering Committee were requested to attend. Drumroll please… 4 0f 5 Town Council members were there, 4 of 9 Plan Commission members were there, 3 of 5 Redevelopment Commission members were there and 2 of 5 Board of Zoning Appeal members were there. For Culver, that’s a damn fine turnout! It’s a partial rebuttal because this was the regular night for the Plan Commission and they also had a plat review on their agenda. There shouldn’t have been any issue getting a quorum there on their regular night!
Meeting Participation in Culver
Monday night I went to the regularly scheduled meeting of the Culver Redevelopment Commission at 5:00 at the Culver Town Hall. I arrived to find the door locked. I looked at the notice on the bulletin board and it stated that the regularly scheduled meeting had been changed to 4:00 and that they had added a joint meeting with the Town Council which they had moved to the Culver Library at 5:00.
As I’ve said here before I tend to cut volunteer board members a lot of slack. They give a lot of time and often only receive slings and arrows from the public in return. I don’t think that’s an excuse for making public participation difficult. My position as Culver’s representative on the Marshall County Economic Development Corporation Board means that my representation there is closely tied to the work the redevelopment commission does. I attend almost every meeting of the redevelopment commission. It is on my calendar to be there on the third Monday at 5:00. It frustrates me to no end when I make a special effort to be at a meeting only to find that they moved the meeting, with private discussion between meetings. I’m not special. They don’t have to let me know. But I think it’s disrespectful and says something about their relationship with MCEDC. While they have fulfilled the letter of the law by posting it on the bulletin board at the Town Hall I also feel it does a disservice to the community. There is also a page on that same bulletin board listing all of the regularly scheduled meetings. If someone other than myself had gone down to see when the next meeting was, read that list and didn’t check later to see that the meeting had been rescheduled they would have been standing out there fuming like myself.
MCEDC Newsletter
MCEDC (Marshall County Economic Development Corporation) has had a busy year so far. As a board member I’ve been pleased with some of the progress we’ve made. Here are a few highlights:
- Installation of a new Executive Director, Jerry Chavez. He started with MCEDC this Spring and hit the ground running. Formerly with the Minot, North Dakota Economic Development Corporation, Jerry has brought new ideas and new energy to the position.
- Revamped the MCEDC website. It has been streamlined and the speed and usability has been increased without losing any of the underlying information.
- Revamped the MCEDC Newsletter, now titled The Economic Development Perspective. As with the website, the newsletter has been streamlined and the frequency has been increased. It’s now an easier read and much more timely.
- We have a Shell Building!
Commerce Building
Now dubbed “The Commerce Building“, the structure is located on Commerce Street in the northwest PIDCO industrial subdivision. It is ready to show now and the shell should be complete by this time next month.
We’ve managed to do all of this without sacrificing any of our ongoing projects such as the County Development for the Future meetings, outreach to the community through SBDC and our commitment of support to Project Lead the Way. I’m looking forward to more good things from MCEDC. If you’re interested in keeping up on those, check out the newsletter link above and add your name to the mailing list. There are more good things to come!
