A recently formed committee called the My Hometown Tama committee has been meeting and organizing small community betterment efforts for the downtown area in Tama over the past year. The group’s mission is to help make downtown Tama more attractive, welcoming and to encourage visitors and shoppers to patronize the area businesses.

Committee members that have contributed over the past year have included: Anne Michel, Joyce Legg, Charles Betz, Sharon Brezina, Brenda Youngbear, Sue Hughes, Sharon Crawford, Barb Stevenson and Sally Willett.

The group met on Jan. 9 to review and brainstorm ideas. They identified several grant opportunities they would like to investigate as well as a couple of fun ideas to share. However, these ideas need more than 6-10 people to implement.

In an effort to raise the capacity of their group’s efforts, the committee is encouraging downtown Tama business owners as well as community members to consider attending an upcoming roundtable meeting to discuss some of these downtown improvement ideas.

“When businesses and the community work together to improve their customer traffic, they are much stronger and more likely to experience success,” organizer Anne Michael said.

The meeting will be Wednesday, February 23, at the Tama Civic Center small meeting room at 5:00 pm. It is planned to take less than one hour.