Ideas for Rison Exchanged at Meeting

RISON - About 40 people gave their ideas about how to make Rison a better place during a community “brainstorming” session hosted by Rison Shine Community Development Monday evening at the Hall-Morgan Veterans Building in Rison.The purpose the community meeting was to get ideas for ways to revitalize the city. Those attending broke up into three focus groups: one for business development, one for events and recreation, and one for public spaces and beautification.“We had a good turn out to start the much needed conversation with community members and county/city officials,” said Kristy Strother, president of Rison Shine. “We would love to have more join the conversation and help us to initiate these ideas.”Strother thanked Lynn Wilson of Rison Pharmacy for sponsoring the refreshments prepared by Suga Nana.Britt Talent, publisher of the Herald and former Rison Shine president, moderated the meeting and the business development breakout group. Former Cleveland County Extension Service agent Les Walz led the discussion on public spaces and beautification, while Rison in the Fall organizer Douglas Boultinghouse moderated the group on events and recreation.After spending about 40 minutes discussing each topic, each of the three moderators gave a report to the group as a whole on the ideas they came up with. Those who were in the other groups had the opportunity to make suggestions as well.One common theme was cleaning up the city by addressing dilapidated houses to beautifying the main thoroughfares through town. Walz said his group came to a consensus that the beautification efforts should start at the Hwy. 35/Hwy. 79 intersection and continue to follow Hwy. 35 through town. Beautifying Main Street was also mentioned.Walz said the clean-up needs to take place first before the city takes any initiative to begin promoting it to visitors.Most of the discussion for business development centered on needs ...