Friends, In the midst of a rather warm discussion on garden accessibility issues carried on the American Community Gardening listserve, Mr. William Hohauser,Pres of NYC's 6B Community garden, shared this piece of intelligence:
Mr. Hohauser stated that after August 2006, there will be no community garden insurance for NYC community gardens provided under the aegis of the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition. "The insurance issue, believe me or not, is true. I talked to Toby Bran[d]t," [of the Neighorhood Open Space Coalition], "three weeks ago and had the news confirmed by Edie Stone. As I stated, nobody has told the gardens, I had to call. The reason I called NOSC was in reaction to the problem at 6BC Garden. In short, a woman sitting in the garden had her foot crushed by rocks falling off an unstable wheelbarrow. The garden was not being monitored by a garden member and the person operating the wheelbarrow was a non- member volunteer. The 6BC garden is temporarily closed now. I am now in discussion with NYC Parks about the garden insurance issue. I'll update the community garden board this week after my meeting with them." Needless to say,this is extremely disturbing news. I will, of course contact NOSC and Greenthumb on behalf of the Clinton Community Garden to confirm this. However, with the strong assumption that Mr. Hohauser's statement is correct, the city's volunteer run community gardens and other volunteer run public spaces have some serious issues to resolve. Running our gardens without insurance coverage would be a greater challenge to our gardens than former Mayor Guiliani and the entire real estate development community gave us. There are community garden organizations throughout the US and Canada. I would be very interested in finding out which insurance companies provide them with insurance, and would be extremely grateful for any information that could be provided to gardeners in NYC. Please forward your insurance information to the ACGA listserv, with a copy to my personal e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Some suggested topics for discussion: 1) How to find a new carrier or carriers to provide affordable public space insurance to our community gardens under the aegis of NOSC, or some other entity. 2) I am not sure what kind of insurance coverage Trust for Public Land, or NY Restoration managed gardens carry. If these gardens have a non NOSC policy, we will should discuss reaching out to them. 3) If our gardens are to get coverage under NYC's insurance, discussions would have to start almost immediately, with NYC Parks and the NYC Parks legal dept., on how, and under what conditions of operations the city's gardens could be covered by NYC's insurance umbrella. Undoubtedly, this option will require for there to be a certain amount of standardization of security and safety practices in our gardens to allow coverage under a group policy. The gardens need to be at the table when this standardization is formulated. 4) All of our gardens will need to have some sort of idea of what this new coverage will cost our gardens, so we can start to raise and set aside cash for what may prove to be a huge budget item for all of our gardens. I've copied representatives of NOSC, Greenthumb, TPL, NY Restoration, the NY Council for the Environment, the American Community Garden Association listserv, the NOSC based cybergardens listserv to get this information circulated. Please feel free to circulate this information among your NYC gardens and gardeners. I work 7 - 5 daily, so while I would most certainly participate in this process, I could not be the point/contact person once we get going - any ideas, volunteers? Best wishes, Adam Honigman Volunteer Clinton Community Garden ______________________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: https://secure.mallorn.com/mailman/listinfo/community_garden
