Kooskia, ID

A meeting has been set for Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at the Discovery Center at Clearwater Valley Elementary School for 6:15 p.m. for the Kooskia Horizons Leadership/Education & Youth Committee. We are encouraging everyone to attend!

The Old Opera House is for sale. We are in danger of losing this community icon built in 1912. Couple this with 9 other businesses for sale or just sold in downtown Kooskia and you have a community on the brink of economic disaster. The Kooskia Horizons Economic Action Team identified this need early on and partnered with the Upper Clearwater Community Foundation to get a grant from the Idaho Commission on the Arts to do a feasibility study to determine if it would be viable to have this building be purchased by a local 501 c 3 and retained as a community building. The answer was a resounding YES! However, the current owners have an offer in the works so we are on hold. The good news is that the anchor tenant, a local arts cooperative, is moving forward in hopes that this building will be available for rent or that they will look for another location. And thanks to local media coverage, the other businesses for sale have had increased interest.

Kooskia and Stites are partnering together on a Horizons Project. A resource guide for Kooskia/Stites and the surrounding area is definitely needed. Many people don’t know what products and services are available right here in our area. With gas around $3.00 a gallon, why waste our money and especially our time going out of town, when we could buy gifts, arts and crafts, and many services here and support our Local Family. Because of this, Kooskia & Stites have solicited infomation from all citizens to identify all services and businesses in our area. This all-inclusive resource guide will be available to all community members and new arrivals to inform them of everything available in our community.

In response to the rising demand for entrepreneural training in rural Idaho, Lewis Clark State College (LCSC) developed an on-line class. Identified as one of the top needs in Kooskia and upon inquiry with the LCSC Small Business Development about their NxLevel program, the offer was made for interested budding entrepreneurs to test this class. Normally the NxLevel 12 session class is conducted on the LCSC campus in Lewiston, 45 miles away and at a $300 fee; both huge barriers. In two days, 21 participants stepped forward to begin the class. This immediate response reaffirmed with LCSC the need for this class.

In late April, early May Kooskia Horizons will join together will Phase I Horizons community, Kamiah to host a 9 hour entrepreneur workshop locally to provide additional assistance to those taking the on-line course and to other people within the region.

Writing a blog (short for Web Log) is the way people of all ages are communicating on the internet. The Kooskia Horizions Program identified a need in our community to train people how to blog to enable everyone to have a voice in our area.

The Blog training will be presented to our community by local youth because during the training given by the Horizions to the community, our youth ran circles around the rest of us.

Keep an eye our for the training schedule!

To get the answer to this question, the Economic Development Action Teams of the Kooskia and Stites Horizons groups contacted the Universtity of Idaho to request assistance for a survey of our area to determine what businesses would be successful and how to market our area to attract those businesses. We are looking forward to the start of this survey in Spring/Summer 2008.

When Horizons guest speaker David Buerle came to Kooskia for our visioning rally I was very excited to see that over 100 members of our community participated. I was also astonished that when Mr. Buerle asked if Kooskia had a newspaper, NOT ONE PERSON had responded with the answer yes. Wow! Did anyone realize that THE CLEARWATER PROGRESS was their community newspaper?

With Kooskia feeling they had no connection to the community newspaper, THE CLEARWATER PROGRESS, even though this newspaper covers sports, events, obituaries, organizations, city and other news that directly relates to Kooskia, I wondered what can be done to make the connection.

I took the information from the rally back to the editor of THE CLEARWATER PROGRESS. After a few months of brainstorming as to how we can better serve Kooskia and the rest of our Clearwater Valley residents, the decision was made.

Beginning the first week in February 2008, THE CLEARWATER PROGRESS NEWSPAPER, will become a FREE community newspaper. It will be delivered to EVERY mailbox in the zip codes that belong to Kooskia, Kamiah and Stites. How exciting is that?!

The folks at the paper are excited too. They feel that they are offering a quality product that is relevant to the whole Clearwater Valley. They will be keeping the community informed and they recognize that their contribution will help reduce poverty in our region.

The newspaper is taking a huge risk by going against the grain. But they are also a forward thinking bunch. How better to reach their consumer than by distributing the news for free? How cool is that?

Once you receive your free paper, recognize that it is a direct result of the Horizons program. Do your part and read the news, participate in community discussion and patronize local businesses.

The Greater Kooskia Chamber of Commerce recently met with the Clearwater Valley High School Student Council. They spoke about a future partnership between the two to get Kooskia youth more involved in the community. Out of that meeting plans for 2008 Kooskia Days were discussed. Based on Student Council input more youth activities will be included during the annual Kooskia Days event. Youth will be involved in the monthly planning meetings, event setup and as volunteers during the event. Kooskia Days will be the first of other Chamber/Kooskia youth endeavers. This is creating opportunities for future leaders of our community.

Not long ago I attended what was billed as a “Kooskia Visioning Rally” to which all Kooskia residents and nearby neighbors were invited. The stated purpose of this rally was to arrive at a shared vision of the future of Kooskia and everyone was encouraged to participate. Almost 100 people attended and a “vision” was arrived at. It’s understood that such a vision is a flexible concept, open to adjustment and amendment as conditions and awareness change, and what’s now called the Kooskia Horizons project has taken up work on effecting that vision.

Immediately following the rally I made an effort to bring the idea of that visioning and the subsequent Horizons project up in conversations with local business owners and friends who hadn’t attended the rally. Along with some refreshingly positive feedback, I was surprised to hear some quite negative comments from several folks.

In particular, some claimed they’d examined the literature passed out at the rally and listened to the presentation and recognized certain “catch phrases” common to organizations intent on community, national and/or world domination. Additionally, they declared that the foundations supplying the seed money for the rally were themselves probably(!) funded by the above organizations. No proofs of these ideas were offered.

I was totally unprepared for these views at the time and didn’t have a ready response. I quickly realized several things, however. I’m sure there are individuals and groups who fantasize, if not plan, for dominating others. On the other hand, if there really were sinister machinations in this case, the perpetrators violated a strategy basic to domination: divide and conquer.

It’s true that our world faces many challenges, many threats. It’s also true that we each need to maintain a healthy skepticism and apply a bit of discernment in making judgments. Another good tool, to me, is examining “what is” right along with “what might be.” Yes, an Australian fellow served as master of ceremonies at the original Visioning Rally. In subsequent meetings, though, only local people have been involved. In short, rather than divide our community, neighbors are talking and working with neighbors to help bring into being a viable positive future for our community. Furthermore, all are volunteers.

With all of the above in mind, check out the previous blog entries below. Then I hope you’ll come join us at our next Community Potluck and Get-together on Saturday, January 19th, from noon till 2 pm, in the Kooskia Community Center. This will be a gathering of all the smaller groups — people focused on specific aspects of “the vision” — at which we’ll be explaining our particular projects. It’s open to all those in our neighborhood so they can become, or stay informed about the Horizons program too.

Again, please consider joining us. At the very least, you’ll see who has been involved and hear what we’ve been thinking and doing. Perhaps you’ll have ideas we overlooked!

David Bearman
Tahoe Ridge

This 8 member Action Team will be involved with the following issues: Lack of Living Wage jobs; Business and Service Directory and the Community Bulletin Board. By June of 2008, we hope to establish an active partnership between the Chamber of Commerce and IdaLew foundation to increase the presence of small businesses in Kooskia, as well as increase the active membership in the Kooskia Chamber of Commerce. We also want to have a Business Market Analysis completed, to identify new businesses that Kooskia needs and determine their sustainability. We will also work with the other Kooskia Horizons Action Teams to complete the Community Bulletin Board and Resource Guide. Long Term, we would like to bring businesses to the Kooskia area that will create an additional 50 jobs.
Kooskia Horizons is slowly overcoming apathy and the defeatist attitude that has undermined similiar endeavors.