Austin Garden Coalition - Sept and Oct Meetings
SCG was represented by Ila Flavey and Charlotte Jernigan at the September meeting of Austin Garden Coalition. AGC meetings, formerly held at The Carver Library, are now held in the new Sustainable Food Center building (2921 E. 17th St, Bldg C.)
The October AGC meeting will be the first of a new format in which one meeting out three each quarter will be a panel discussion. These panels are open to the public but will target community garden perspectives. On 10/21/13 the panel topic will be Composting at Community Gardens. Future panel topics will be Fruit Trees at CGs (Jan), Bees at CGs (April) and Water Conservation at CGs (July). A future topic of Weed Control at CGs was also proposed.
The September AGC meeting was unusual. Almost 30 people attended because the meeting provided an opportunity to meet several new employees of the City of Austin who have a potential Impact on community gardens.
The first speaker, Meredith Gray, is the new Sustainable Urban Agriculture and Community Gardens Coordinator (Meredith.gray@austintexas.gov.) SUACG is part of the City of Austin Parks Department and her program primarily focuses on community gardens that are targeting parks & rec land. They now have a streamlined six step process for citizen groups to go through when they want to establish a community garden on PARD land. SUACG has set a goal of "one year or less" for a straight-forward proposal to be through all six steps. They also provide boiler-plate bylaws and work closely with Sustainable Food Center's training program for people who want to start a community garden. Their current highlight project is Adelphi Acre (Parmer & MoPac), a well organized coalition who are close to getting their license to operate. Adelphi had 10 people at this AGC meeting - very organized and enthusiastic! Though not yet licensed/open, they are already fully rented out with a waiting list. See http://adelphiacre.org/ for more detail.
The second speaker was Justin Golbabai, Neighborhood Partnering Program Manager, City of Austin Public Works Department (Justin.golbabai@austintexas.gov.) Justin's group started in 2009 and they are modeled after a successful City of Seattle collaboration with their neighborhood associations to improve quality-of-life. NPP has budget money to co-fund projects. Application submission deadlines are twice a year in October and June. They work with Austin neighborhood associations to co-fund all types of projects ranging from neighborhood watch signs, to "sidewalks and plantings", traffic management, protected-parking, walk-ways and medians. They get involved in community garden proposals when proposals target city land other than PARD land, or when a project needs help with creative co-funding. NPP is partnering with UT dept of Civil Engineering to have students engineer corrections for problems preventing approval. The students may also provide "templates" for community garden layouts.