Community Revitalization

Business surveys are collected and tabulated by Danny Eckert.

Student surveys are distributed to 118 Delight students. Surveys collected same day.  Audubon Director of Education Mary Smith leads Delight students in a project to discover and document the natural resources of the area.

Southwest organizer, Danny Eckert, distributes business surveys to area businesses.

The following are ideas to benefit Delight that were shared in the 59 Community Surveys collected on September 8, 2008:

A drop off place for recycling (with the Howard County Children’s Center); town beautification; paint up and fix up the old buildings downtown; have small business to process deer / taxidermy; school landscaping cleanup “adopt a bed”, plant flowers, etc, a community school garden, broadband internet access for people who can live and work anywhere; protect our great school system.

The Park needs help (old equipment, broken glass, profanity on tables, lack of garbage cans); grants available or fundraisers (Park Day); Appearance – many buildings need paint and/or windows, flowers and plants, new welcome signs outside town; light up the town at Christmas; a clean-up Delight day one or two Saturdays a year; School – Need counselors for students to talk about life, not just whether or not to go to college.  Need more job related courses, especially those interested in art, music or communications.  Teens need something to do and somewhere to express themselves.

We need to promote small businesses and find a good reason to bring tourism to Delight with a Glen Campbell museum.

We need something for our young kids to do including teenagers.  Our park is a very sad area to play around, and the teens sitting at the bank or car wash are bored on Friday and Saturday nights.  Our kids should not have to travel these dangerous roads to go to Hot Springs to have something to do.

We need to promote industry and open more stores; open a children day care centers six weeks to three years old; we need a fast food restaurant; we need to acquire an industrial plant;

We need to keep our school open to provide excellent opportunities for our children.  Delight schools have had a lot of success with achieving great academics for our children.

We need to promote small businesses and industry; we need to have a place for our young people other than the bank parking lot, alcohol and drug free; we need a roller rink, maybe, with many pool tables or some sort of supervised activity, maybe with concession items such as drinks, sodas, nuts, etc. or even a bowling alley.  The kids need something to do.

We need a charcoal plant for products used in barbequing.

We need a Glen Campbell Museum (we have some of his family members here who have access to his personal items), we need a motel for the many hundreds of tourists who travel through Delight every Spring through Fall to hunt for diamonds (10 miles from Delight) and who travel to the large Lake Greeson for swimming, boating and camping.  We also need a KOA Campground as all of the hotels in Murfreesboro stay full during tourist season and folks have nowhere to stay the night.  We need to give downtown Delight a “face lift” and paint all the old buildings on main street and put in specialty shops, arts and crafts, ice cream and snacks (ice cream parlor/rec center for students), antiques, taxidermy, quilting shop, even a “Dollar Store” would be nice as kids and parents must travel out of town for even small items for school.  If the buildings are vacant, we could decorate the windows with antiques, etc.  The welcome signs coming into Delight need to be repaired and updated.  We need the tourists to stop on their way through Delight.   We need to clean up our city park and make it more attractive and add an inexpensive recreation center for our kids, reunions and gatherings.  The school students could have projects related to the park such as planting and maintaining flower beds, etc; The shady corner lot of the school could also be made into a beautiful school park with benches and flowers beds, etc. and can provide a place for students to picnic, study and visit while at school, and this would be an inexpensive project.

Main Street should be clean and neat to present a good first impression.  Clean up store fronts on Main Street.  Clean up around and behind the diners.  Business owners should park somewhere besides in the front door of their business.

Clean up and Fix Up Buildings and Lots in Delight.  Develop Tourism with attractions and facilities.  Develop small businesses to bring in revenue from outside community.  Expand city limits to create bigger tax base, therefore better streets and government services.

Promote Industry and Small Businesses.

To keep our school open to provide excellent opportunities for our children.  Delight schools have had a lot of success with achieving great academics for our children.

We need more jobs.

We need jobs for people to come to Delight

We need to promote industry

We need to provide local financial incentives

Together we need to work on new solutions to local problems – unity to save our school and our town.  Churches need to reach out – power of prayer; we also need to promote industry.

We need to promote industry.

We need a place for young people to meet.

Delight needs a Glen Campbell Museum so people can stop on their way to the Diamond Mine.

We need to promote small business.

We need more jobs.

We need better and more housing.

We need things for children, and places to play besides the Bank Parking Lot.

We need to promote industry.

We need our school to stay here.  We need places for more jobs here.

We need a recreation center.

We need to promote industry.

We need more jobs!  We need to keep our school open!

Bring in new business to keep and attract people.

Surveys are distributed at the Fun Run on Friday and Saturday and to area churches on Sunday.  Drop boxes for responses are placed at Bank of Delight, McKnight Grocery, and Delight School.  Seventy-nine responses are collected and tabulated by Carol Hale.

Renee Carr, Executive Director of ACRE and the Delight Survey Committee meet to determine who, what, where to survey in order to obtain information for a community assessment.  Committee members are Ed Jones, Scott Kelton, Connie Kelton, Rob Lee, Tammy Lee, Kathy Cole, Danny Eckert, Carol Hale, Sera Snow, James Stone, Beverly Meeks, James McKnight, Avonne Petty, Steve Campbell, Thomas Henderson, and Wallace Alexander. The committee decides which questions to include and determines that the upcoming Fun Run Fundraiser for Make-A-Wish Foundation will be the best place to distribute surveys in addition to area churches.  They anticipate that all communities within the Delight School District will be represented at the Fun Run to get good participation for the survey.