Monday's Meeting To Focus On Beautification of Rison

RISON - Rison Shine will hold a community meeting on beautification and public spaces in Rison at 6 p.m. Monday, Aug. 25, at the Hall-Morgan Veterans Building, 404 Sycamore Street in Rison, Rison Shine President Kristy Strother has announced.The meeting is open to anyone interested in revitalizing and beautifying the city of Rison.This will be the third in a series of public meetings that Rison Shine has arranged in a renewed effort to revitalize the downtown area and Rison as a whole.Rison Shine had a general meeting in June to address three areas of community development for the community: business development, public spaces/beautification, and events/recreation. Now, the group is now holding separate meetings to address each of those topics individually. The first meeting on business development was held at the end of July.Monday's will address public spaces and beautification. During the June meeting, one of the main topics was beautifying the points of entrance into town, particularly the entry at the Hwy. 35/79 intersection. In addition, eliminating the eyesores around town and cleaning up the downtown are were also discussed.Rison Shine has applied for grant money to buy benches, lamp post banners, trash can receptacles, flower pots and a new deck for FBT Community Park. Strother, along with Malinda Berry and Britt Talent will lead the Aug. 25 meeting with a goal to target areas and organize clean up efforts.The September meeting will focus on events and recreation. Douglas Boultinghouse, a Rison Shine officer and director of the Rison in the Fall Festival, and Stacy Walz, executive director of the Cleveland County Community Theater, will lead that discussion.The event-focused meeting will be held Monday, Sept. 29 at 6 p.m. at the Cleveland County Fairgrounds Meeting room, 17 Fairgrounds Drive in Rison.Topics for this meeting include expanding on current events like the fall festival, Christmas events...