Board Meeting April 12, 2016
Members Present: Jeff Monks, Jim Williamson, Kay McMurry, Caroline Limaye, Shannon Posern, Katie Davis, Nicole Fisher
Plant Sale -
- Will have a potluck for volunteers of the plant sale, or catered meal.
- We will host a meeting to discuss lessons learned to determine how we can improve for next year.
Financial -
- Donate $4800 to TSBVI after plant sale.
- Plant Sales Net receipts: $48,004.10
- Plant sale net profit $26,111.17
Plots -
- Waiting list 58 people.
- 2 quarter plots available.
Nominations Committee -
- Secretary and 3 director positions open
- Laurie Daupen - interested in running for a director position
Education Committee -
- Literature in the Garden - April 16
Pilot Program -
- Recommend we continue adding a special make up workday for those looking to reduce or remove fines for unworked service hours.
Recording Hours -
- Stress the need for all gardeners to record their hours.
Arbor for the school for the Blind -
- Plot ready to build in April.
- Budget $550 furniture - $1250 total
- Approved by board.
Hackberry dying by chicken coop -
- Needs to be removed. The board will look to hire someone to remove the tree.
Other Issues:
- Chronic underused plots - We already have a formal notice. The notice is given if a gardener receives 2 warnings in a season and/or 3 in a year about noncompliance/underuse. Not fair to zone coordinators to have someone that is constantly underperforming. Board wants Zone coordinators to be more proactive to send warnings.
- Little Library - We will be placing a little library where the bulletin board used to be.
- Whole Kids - Children's garden
- Shannon and others will be working on writing a grant to pay for a children's garden.
- Compost buy - Garden will be buying 30 yards of compost from Whittlesey for gardeners to purchase. This maybe a built in fee in the future. If successful, we might also do this in the fall before the fall plant sale.
- Tool cleaning station - We need brushes for cleaning tools. Also, we would like to add gravel or rocks to help prevent muddy area.
- Accessibility committee - Nicole Fisher is moving forward with creating an accessibility committee. She will give us a description and a formal announcement will be made at the next all gardener meeting.
- Survey of gardeners - A survey of talents and interests for all gardeners will be created and going out hopefully in early summer. The survey will be used to help write grants and to put gardeners in touch with service projects around the garden that they have a talent or interest in.
- Community service - We received a request from a someone looking to do community service hours at the garden. Will reach out to the requester to find out more, then will contact Ila to see about supervising.
- Withdraw forms -
- We will be adding a line to the withdraw form regarding secondary gardeners taking over for a withdrawing primary gardener. We will put a stipulation for board approval of the secondary gardener. Basics for approval will be that the secondary must have been a secondary on that plot for at least 6 months before. The plot must be in good shape and eligible for cleanup fee refund.
- All withdrawing gardeners should contact the plot coordinator before withdrawing. Plot coordinator will send them the link for the withdraw form and give the completed form/information to the treasurer and secretary.
- A new gardener can leave in the first 30 days without penalty to encourage people to get out early if they cannot handle the plot. Site rule change to make withdraw form consistent the rules. Jim will be writing this up.
- Community Garden Conference -
- We will fund 4 attendees.
- 2 gardeners from Sunshine will be chosen by lottery. To be included in the lottery, a gardener must state that they want to attend and understand that they will be expected to use the knowledge gained to contribute back to our garden.
- 2 other attendees will be chosen from another community garden and TSBVI.
- We will fund 4 attendees.
