9/27/12
At Monday night's council meeting a portion of the Parks Commission report (see: http://lmcc.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?publish_id=693 and agenda item 7A) covered proposed fencing for the community garden in the "skate park." The minutes of the last Parks Commission meeting show $5,000 being proposed for this improvement.
Some history is in order.
Community Gardens was an idea proposed by some volunteer gardeners and heavily promoted by Mayor Lizee. The original idea was for one garden with plots rented to residents with the gardeners giving classes on how to garden. Lizee immediately jumped to going to a Park Commission meeting and advocating gardens be created in every city park. Ultimately, some good sense prevailed and one garden was established in the skate park as a test of the concept.
Now, the volunteer gardners have been out of the picture for two years and there are some 16 garden plots available with something like 15 actually rented and in use. The rent for the plots nowhere near covers the cost to the City in staff time and materials to keep the garden operating. Now, a very expensive fence is being proposed because Excelsior has one that looks much nicer.
The Insider thinks the council needs to look at where it's spending money. Is supporting 15 residents doing gardening a priority? Certainly spending $5,000 to put up a fence for benefit of 15 residents is nonsensical.
Happy Reading!
The Insider
Community gardens are part of the enlightened world we live in. As food prices soar and people are more conscious of the toxins in the food chain, they want to regain control over what goes in their mouth. No one can fault that.
ReplyDeleteBy offering the community garden opportunity, Shorewood is just keeping in step with 1000s of other cities around the country. Should we pay $5k to fence it in? This resident thinks not.
Any gardener knows a fence can be as much a part of growing as fertilizer. They should do their own fencing and the city should relax any rules that say otherwise.