Community Garden Supporters Seek Greater Protections

Community garden activists rally on the steps of City Hall today before a City Council Committee on Parks & Recreation oversight hearing seeking greater protections. This will be the first public hearing since the City adopted its controversial new community garden rules in September. As a concession, the administration announced today that community gardens registered and licensed by the Parks Department will be good for four years instead of two. (Video capture: NY1 news)

Testifying today about the new rules adopted by the city, Bloomberg operative Larry Scott Blackmon, now a Deputy Commissioner for the Parks Department said, "There were those who spread fears that these rules were written as a means to further development. That is not and has never been our intent."

City Wide

Earlier this year, the city took steps to preserve hundreds of community gardens. But some critics say those protections didn't go far enough. NY1's Bobby Cuza filed the following report.

Even activists say the Bloomberg administration has been a friend when it comes to protecting the city's 600 community gardens. But they worry what could happen under a different mayor, one like Rudy Giuliani, who once sought to auction off gardens to developers.

"Some of it is flashing back to a previous administration that wasn’t supportive. And worrying that if an administration in the future is also not supportive, that they’re gonna have to fight for the future of their gardens all over again," said Steven Frillmann of Green Guerillas.

In September, the city’s Parks Department issued new regulations that protect community gardens so long as they're in good standing. But critics, some of whom rallied at City Hall Monday, say they want more permanent protection. They say the process for finding a garden in default is vague and worry it could lead to gardens being taken over by developers.

"We want to make sure that the city, if that’s the intent, that if there’s a problem with garden members, that the garden members are removed, but the garden itself remains intact," said Karen Washington of the New York City Community Garden Coalition.

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Proposed New Rules Worry Community Garden Advocates

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York TimesTremont Community Garden in the Bronx in 2008. New rules are being written for the city’s community gardens.

CITY-WIDE

New rules being drafted by the city may omit some protections and assurances accorded nearly a decade ago to hundreds of community gardens scattered across the five boroughs, according to the New York Times.

The proposed rules, which are being written by the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, are meant to replace a 2002 agreement between the city and the New York State attorney general’s office that helped end years of court battles and protests involving the future of the gardens.

That agreement, which is set to expire in September, settled a lawsuit in which the attorney general’s office sought to stop the Giuliani administration from selling city-owned gardens to developers.

As a result, the city preserved 198 community gardens in the parks department’s GreenThumb program, increased the protection of 197 other gardens and agreed not to develop 100 gardens maintained by the Department of Education. About 150 gardens were designated for sale and development.

Several drafts of the new rules, which are not yet finalized, describe a process to develop gardens that is similar to the one in the existing agreement. But the drafts and the current agreement also differ significantly. The drafts, so far, do not contain language guaranteeing the continuation of gardens preserved by the existing agreement. And while the existing agreement states that “the city represents that it has no present intention of selling or developing” other gardens, such assurances do not appear in the drafts.

Consequently, some gardeners said, the draft rules would appear to make all gardens equally eligible for development, regardless of their current status.

“This would be a policy change from preservation to the ability to develop,” said Aresh Javadi of the New York City Community Garden Coalition, who said he would ask that the city make all GreenThumb gardens permanent. “We want to work with them to achieve a fruitful agreement that gives parks gardens a safe and protected environment.”

New Rules Worry Community Garden Advocates

New York Times  City Room - July 6, 2010 - By Colin Moynihan