Oldham, SD

This article is submitted by Sandy Smith of Oldham:

The Oldham Gym was a very busy place to be on Tuesday April 8th….along with the “Military Display” voting for a new Mayor and a Ward 1 Council Member started the day off at 7:00 a.m.  Blood Services truck then pulled into the parking lot about 1:00 to get ready for the 2nd Annual Auxiliary Blood Drive…then at 2:30 you could smell coffee being made in the kitchen as some ladies were setting up goodies for the “Community Gathering  Cofffee Time” which they were hosting free that afternoon to give the community member a place to gather and visit with their neighbors and friends!  Blood is life giving….and we had many community members who came to give their blood between the hours of 2:30-6:30.  Blood Services personal were very please with the good turn out from the Oldham community and they told us how much they enjoyed all the goodies in the kitchen!  

     By 7:30 the votes were counted, the gym cleaned up and Oldham had a new Mayor….Roger Eide…Congratulations!  Congratulations also to John Pester who will be representing Ward 1. 

      The Oldham American Legion Auxiliary want to thank everyone who made our 2nd Annual Blood Drive a success….and thanks to the community members who came and enjoyed visiting over the goodies in the kitchen!   Thank-you also to the community members who came out and voted…..THANK-YOU to all who have served “Our Country”  in the past and present allowing us to live in a country that is FREE ….where we do have the freedom to vote! 

Greetings from the Bickett home. Well this is our home ,however we are getting Home Away from Home ready for you. Mike and I have been busy this winter cleaning and fixing on our rental home we purchased. We are getting anxious to get it done and have an open house. We would like to be able to rent it short term to fishermen, hunters or someone back for a visit. Thanks to the Horizons program we were inspired to go ahead and purchase the home and start this process. We have completely gutted the kitichen and done some other renovations. We would love to hear from you if you are interested in renting for a night or two. We would like to have it ready to go by May 1st. I will try to keep everyone informed on our progress. Take care and have a great week.

This post has been submitted by Sandy Smith of Oldham for posting to the Community Blog: Please join us to RECOGNIZE, HONOR AND APPRECIATE those who serve our country.

Tuesday April 8th a Military Display was sat up in the lobby of the Oldham Gym…this display was to honor and recognize  “Our Present Military with Oldham Ties”…There were pictures of each of the 21 presently serving our country along with their rank and address!  We as a community know that “FREEDOM  IS  NOT  FREE” and we as the Oldham American Legion Auxiliary thought this would be a way to honor them and to let them know how much we appreciate what they are doing for us by serving our country and to let them know how proud we are of each one of them!!! 

     We know we probably have missed some and we are sorry!  If you have a family member who is serving in a branch of the military please contact Ann Lingbeck or Sandy Smith.

The Horizons Committees have been busy building partnerships and involving many groups and organizations in our efforts to address poverty in Oldham. The City council was asked to pay for half of the cost of the citywide clean up on May 2 which they agreed to do. The county commission has deeded property over to OAIC for the housing committee, the school district is allowing the use of the school gym for meetings and allowing internet to be installed for the Horizons group. Alliance Communications is installing and providing free high speed internet into the school gym for Horizons. Horizons Health Care Systems will be partnering with the community for health screenings and health education. Horizons and ORR students partnered together to have a food drive for the food bank. That involves many groups in the community including the churches and some other groups that support the food bank. Many other possibilities are being explored. 

Representatives of the various committees met in the regular monthly meeting with “Coach Martha” to report progress on the work over the past month. The convenience store committee met and discussed numerous aspects of developing a plan to get a new convenience store in Oldham. They have been investigating possible locations for a store. Several committee members went to the economic and entrepreneurship meeting in Forestburg. Several members of the committee also visited a couple of convenience stores and visited with the owners and managers of the stores to learn what has worked and not worked for the businesses. The housing committee is busy gathering information on possible tax delinquent property to ask the county to deed the property over to the OAIC to demolish the buildings and make the lots available for anyone who wants to build a new house. They have bids for demolishing two buildings and will be continuing with the efforts to improve housing in the community.

Sunday January 20, the Oldham Horizons committees came together to get their committees organized and get down to the business of accomplishing the goals set out in our Strategic Plan. Almost 30 people sat down in four different committees and began to map out their ideas and plans for reaching the goals set for each of the committees. Each committee organized themselves with a contact person or chairman and a recorder so they can keep track of their progress and report back to Horizons and the OAIC. It was also announced that the Tour de Kota bike tour is going to make a return visit to Oldham for the second year in a row.

The Oldham Food Pantry is operated by volunteers within the community and serve the Oldham and Ramona area. They have had the pantry in operation for many years and use the Oldham Lutheran Church for the collection and storage of the pantry items. Many thanks are to be given for the volunteers operating the pantry. They do this with out fanfare and have often not really even publicized their efforts for the sake of the privacy of the people they help. We do need to recognize their efforts and support the work being done by these wonderful volunteers. The following was given to me by one of the volunteers so we could post it on the blog.

” The Oldham Community Food Pantry delivered “Thanksgiving Baskets”  to 15 families the week before Thanksgiving.  These baskets included a turkey or hamburger plus sausage, potatoes, stuffing, peanut butter along with various other food items, non food items such as toilet paper, tooth paste & brushes, shampoo, all types of soaps plus many other items!  “Care Packages” were given to 2 households also.

      “Christmas Boxes” were also made up by the  Oldham Community Food Pantry and delivered before Christmas week to 17 households.   These boxes contained  among many other food items a ham and apples.  Non-food items were again included in the boxes and diapers were included in this outreach.  JC Penny’s Gift Certificates in the amount of $10.00  were given out to 21 children.”

The OAIC has approved  the By Laws and Articles of Incorporation and adopted the Conflict of Interest Resolution.  This is the final step in establishment of our 501c3 non profit corporation.

Wednesday January 9, Oldham’s Horizons II group kicked off the New Year with our first monthly meeting. Attendance was light but the group is getting to work to work on our goals set out in the Strategic Plan. Work is beginning on getting the committees up and running and the next meetings will be held on Sunday January 20 at 6:00 PM with pizza and refreshments. Discussion was held on blogging and we have been finding it difficult to get new bloggers. Many in the community don’t have internet access and most that do have internet have dial-up and are having difficulty getting to the blog and it runs extremely slow. We have started discussions on ways to work around that and that will be one of the tasks of the new communications committee. I have heard that some communities were having blogging nights. Has that been working for them?

Oldham South Dakota

The little brick town on the prairie 

Introduction:

Oldham was introduced to Horizons II, which is funded through the Northwest Area Foundation, through a spotlight meeting in October of 2006. Oldham was accepted into the Horizons II program. A steering committee was formed and community members were invited to participate in study circles. More than fifty people participated in an open dialogue about the challenges facing Oldham and about poverty within the community. The participants identified the assets within Oldham including people, organizations, and businesses. This led into Leadership Plenty and is continuing through Community Visioning. The community was sent a survey asking how they see poverty in Oldham and what their vision of Oldham in the future will be. Fifty-five surveys were returned and the information was compiled and presented to the community at the visioning kick off. Through these steps many ideas have been formed to address the issues of poverty and there is a new determination to improve our community and make Oldham a progressive, safe, and attractive community to live and raise their families.  

VISION STATEMENT 

We will promote Oldham as a close-knit, clean, and thriving community. Oldham will work in partnership with community members and organizations as well as the Horizons Community Strategic Planning Team, city, county, and state governments, the Oldham Area Improvement Corporation, and the Industrial Development Corporation to promote and develop new business, affordable housing, and job opportunities.