4. SR 06-06-2011 - Laserfiche WebLink

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~fC2.r1C~C~u.~ ~~ 9 ~l~ 1 ~~ Open Mike C~tv °' MEMORANDUM ~~~ ~~ Rimier TO: City Council DATE: June 6, 201 I SUBJECT: Community Garden in Orono Park Isabel Smith, a local resident, stopped by City Hall today and noted she is planning on coming to the Open Mike portion of the meeting to request the use of community garden space. As you may recall back in 2009, the University of MN Extension/4-H received a grant in-order to develop a community garden in Sherburne County. Council approved the request and Orono Park was chosen as the community garden site. The Extension offices have discontinued offering this service because funding is no longer available. Ms. Smith is requesting Council approval to continue with the community garden program. She provided some of the attached documents she obtained from the U of M Extension. Most of the work for this program was done by the U of M. They took care of tilling, contracts, releases, publicity, money, and general oversight. The city never received or collected any funds for this program. If the city took on this project, it would need to determine whether a fee should be collected, how much, how finances are handled, who does the tilling, how contracts are handled, attorney review of the contracts, publicizing the garden, general oversight, and how volunteers could be utilized. The city donated compost at the beginning of the year, ERMU donated water, and containers for water storage were donated. There may have been 2-3 400 gallon containers fox water storage. With the current allocation of resources, it would be very difficult for staff to take this project on at this time and get the garden up and running during the 2011 growing season. The Council could consider evaluating the Community Garden program to plan into the 2012 season. N:\Public Bodies\Ciry Council\Council RCA\Community Garden.doc