Hi, Julie, It is on city-owned land? The city (our tax dollars pay for this) has liability policies already (and the county does, and the public schools) covering much more dangerous activities than recreational gardening (highly competitive sports, upkeep and operation of heavy equipment, law enforcement, jails etc etc). While you can't change policy in a day, it is very reasonable to ask for a rider to cover community gardens, even if it means setting some basic restrictions on gardener behavior. I urge you to be nice about it, but to at least raise the issue.
You may well get some support from Cooperative Extension in Gaston County, which is working on community gardens and from - GREAT NEWS!!! for North Carolina - veteran community garden supporter and (I think) past ACGA Board Member Lucy Bradley from Arizona, who is now Dr. Lucy Bradley, newly arrived on the faculty of NC State with a portfolio covering Urban Agriculture. My sense is that, at least here in the Southeast, often liability policies are a ruse to prevent something new and not well understood, like community gardens in NC, from gaining a toehold. I've even seen it here in Charlotte - you might want to chat with June Blotnick, now director of our Clean Air Coalition, who ran into this same problem with her community garden on public land (in a park, no less) last year: director at clean-air-coalition.org Dorene is right, of course - this list does need a 'how to' guide covering nuts and bolts (seeds and roots?) of community gardening. No, one doesn't really exist now, unfortunately. But, I guess, we all share responsibility for letting such shortcomings persist, and we all need to roll up our sleeves and change the situation. Rather than join ACGA's Advocacy Committee (though it sure would be cool to work with my friend Bobby), maybe some of us should get cracking on this kind of practical stuff. A FAQs would be a good start, at least. Don Boekelheide who has been doing rain dances in Charlotte for the past 2 days - we NEEDED it!!! >---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sun, 03 Jun 2007 19:47:41 +0000 > From: "julie young" <theyoungwoman at hotmail.com> > Subject: [Community_garden] Liability Insurance > To: community_garden at list.communitygarden.org > Message-ID: > <BAY120-F203796D2ACDA6BA03553F3A6220 at phx.gbl> > Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed > > The city that we are leasing the prperty from has > asked us to get a million > dollars worth of liability insurance. I am sure many > of you have done this. > Any suggestions, estimated cost, wording. > Julie Young > West Shelby Community Garden > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 20:41:02 -0400 > From: "garlicgrower at green-logic.com" > <garlicgrower at green-logic.com> > Subject: Re: [Community_garden] Liability Insurance > To: community_garden at list.communitygarden.org > Message-ID: > > > Hi, Folks! > > Not that I'm not in "fired up against the Machine" > mode, but didn't we just talk about this? > > It's ruse -- check the archives for details. > > Now that we have a new ED and a new office in > Columbus, shouldn't they be putting together a "Best > of" > FAQ out of all of our replies for the website? > > Dorene (not at my computer, so no sig)
