Email with Maureen 9/18

Hi Amy,
I was at a conference when your emails came in. Sorry for the delayed response. I did have some neighbors from the neighborhood contact me and raise some strong opposition to the garden proposal. We currently have a Volunteers Maintenance Agreement with one of these gentlemen for mowing the grass. I asked them to let their views be known to the Civic Association. Have you heard of this, yet.
One thing Recreation and Parks does not want to get into is pitting neighbors against neighbors. I really hope this can be worked out. The gentleman that contacted me lives adjacent to the park.
I will call you this afternoon. In answer to your question - we develop a lease agreement with your Civic Association. Your garden would be organized as a subgroup of the CA. It was the CA's ownership of land that allows the raised beds and any fencing. (however, the fencing was a big part of the objections from the neighbors). As your CA, you can decide who gardens there.
As a side note, I don't think we will allow chicken wire. That's a fencing material that we definitely are trying to avoid. I am looking into the garden policies that Grandview has for guidance.
I look forward to talking with you!
Maureen
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Hi, Maureen, Yep, that is what I wanted to talk to you about-a heads up as well as ask about some other issues. Unfortunately, when I did the survey a year ago, none of those neighbors joined in the discussion. If I had known there would be any opposition, my year's worth of work wouldn't have happened. BUT the good thing is we have made some headway between community gardens and the parks, so I am happy about that. Maybe someone else will have more luck! So, like the city, I also do not want to put a garden in where people don't want it. That was never my intention, but they never talked to me, so there was no way to know. But some of them have contacted me now, so we are going to do another survey with the updated garden plan and more specific information to find out what the new feelings are about the garden. I will share the results with you if you are interested. I am going to contact Jennifer Adair from the CA so she can have heads up, too. It is so frustrating that people didn't just start this process by talking to me first-the whole reason they have your name is because I shared on the blog about our meetings and the steps we have been going through. I have gone above and beyond to make this whole process transparent and invite people into the planning (the blog, meetings, updates, work days, etc) and instead of being neighborly, people acted poorly. I suppose you have to deal with this in some fashion with CRP. It is draining. Not that this matters, but I don't think chicken wire is in the plans.Okay, so I will look forward to your call and we can just make sure everything is clear.Thanks!!Amy