Donna’s House would bring benefits

By Christine Leipheimer - 07/29/2008

I’m writing about Donna’s House in Anaconda and the discussion held at the commissioner meeting. My letter comes from my long experience with the Family Resource Center both as a volunteer and as a longtime board member. I am also a mother of three grown girls, a teacher at Fred Moodry Middle School and a business owner.

I would like to say that I fully understand the concerns that Linda Sather raised at the meeting concerning Donna’s House being built in her son’s neighborhood. As with anything, change can be hard — yet with open lines of communication, transitions can become easier for all those involved.

If one were to take a walk around the proposed site at 212 E. Fourth St., you would come across the junior high, Snack Station, Hearst Library, Kennedy Commons, Washoe Theatre, three churches plus the Horizon group home. This is a busy section of our town. I believe Donna’s House would be a great addition to this neighborhood since it is already an area where local children hang out.

Donna’s House would be located in an area that the youth being served would have easy access. I know driving kids from one activity to another is not only time consuming but costly as well. At the proposed location, students would be able to walk to Donna’s House without need for transportation.

One of the questions that arose at the meeting concerned parking. Donna’s House will employ Paula VanMeel as our full time employee, Jeannie Duckles and Laurie Duncan as part-timers. They will park their vehicles in the back of the house as per planning board recommendations. Parents picking up their children would be the only traffic to that area as well as the occasional van that we use to shuttle the children to off-site activities.

Another topic of discussion concerned bright lighting and signage. Donna’s house would be open Monday through Friday with the majority of the building usage being from 3:30 to 6 p.m. during the winter months and from noon to 3 p.m. during the summer as there are usually day activities planned to keep the children involved with the various programs. We plan on using the street lamps that are currently located on all of Fourth Street. We might turn on the porch light in the early winter evenings. Our last sign had 6-inch painted letters — not huge by any means.

I keep mentioning programs so I’d like to explain just a few of our offerings. After school tutoring is an important one. As a teacher I am always recommending this as an option for students to improve their grades. We not only provide tutors, we provide a place kids can go after school instead of an empty house. Many parents worry about their child home alone until they get home from work. Donna’s House is the perfect solution; we provide a snack, assistance with homework if necessary, computers to work on, as well as board games to play until it is time to go home.

Other programs have taught kids to sew, cook, fish, explore their community and assist in ways such as clean-up. This leads to another issue addressed by an audience member who lives by the old Donna’s House. Last spring Donna’s House participated in the National Global Youth Service Day clean-up. The kids were excited with the chance to win prizes and to help beautify their community. One of the neighbor’s sons was watching television and couldn’t hear because of the noise outside so he went to investigate and found the kids cleaning up.

This is the first complaint since we opened up the previous Donna’s House in November 2004. I’d say we have a pretty good track record as far as not being a neighborhood disturbance. Why, the absence of the barking dog at the proposed new site would be a benefit in noise reduction for neighbors.

The benefits the neighborhood could look forward to are a neat yard, a painted, remodeled house and the knowledge that their child and others in the community will have a place to go to learn, grow and experience supervised companionship with other youth.

I hope the county commissioners will consider voting yes for Donna’s House. Our past practices have spoken loud and clear that we would be a great addition to the neighborhood and the community. Please, if you have any questions, call the Family Resource Center at 563-7972 so that we can help answer your questions and concerns.

— Christine Leipheimer, of 4611 Lost Creek Road in Anaconda, teaches at Fred Moodry Middle School and is director of the Family Resource Center’s Summer Food and Fun program.