Recently, there has been a lot of trash talk about the Town of Montgomery Community Garden. There have been unfounded allegations, overwrought discussions, and, in my view, actions taken by town officials beyond the scope of their office and without the needed resolution of a majority of the full voting town board. Let’s start at the beginning.

My good friend, Mary Ellen Matisse, Town Historian, has a house full of more paper than NYC has confetti at a Yankee’s World Series Parade. One of those papers contains the minutes of the Montgomery Town Board on March 19, 2009.

I was sick that day. My wife, Nancy, carried the torch for me and to quote the minutes, “…requested approval from the Board to 1. Approve the establishment of a line item for the Community Garden. 2. Approval for the Conservation Advisory Council (CAC) to be allowed to accept donations. 3. Permission to rototill the garden. 4. Permission to put up a fence. 5. Permission to set up a Rule Committee. 6. Permission to drill a well. 7. In concept, permission to build a pump house and possibly use electricity if that is the only alternative. 8. Install picnic table in common area. 9. Permission to begin organic compost pile. 10. Permission to take soil sample to Cornell Cooperative Extension. 11. Permission to plant fruit trees and shade trees. 12. Permission for the CAC to establish rules and regulations for the garden and to designate enforcement through a representative of the CAC to a Garden Committee. 13. Permission to establish a barbeque in the common area.” (I was looking to build a nice, hot, outside shower too, but held back.)

At this meeting, the Town Board passed the following Resolution 4-0-1: “A Motion by Councilman Feller, seconded by Councilman Dempsey, Jr. that the Town Board of the Town of Montgomery authorizes Richard Phelps to collect funds for the Community Garden and to go forward with the list above, except for running electricity.”

Subsequent actions of the board allowed for the electrification of the water pump. It also, under direction from the Town Attorney, Charles Bazydlo, allowed Richard Phelps through the CAC – and the soon to be established Garden Committee – to establish their own bank account outside the clerk’s office for the receiving of garden donations and plot fees under the auspices of the Town’s CAC. The garden’s budget has been reported to the Town Board every year in the annual summary of the Garden’s performance by the CAC to the Board. There is no mystery here.

Let’s review some of the recent trash talk about the garden.

That the garden has become expensive, and the bank account has been raided and misspent. This is pure hoax and fiction. The entire community garden was built without a single penny of taxpayer money. The well was drilled by Ricky Tompkins, for free. The well casing pipe was donated by Dempsey Steel Pipe. George Bliss donated our irrigation system. Bill Kirnan donated electrical services. The Bruderhof drilled all our post holes for the fence. I rototilled all the plots on a tractor and tiller donated by Winding Hills Farm. Crist Brother Orchard donated apple trees for the common area. Nat Winum donated hand tools and thornless blackberry bushes. I used my own lawn mower to mow the garden and its walkways and its grass parking lot and surrounding border for the first year and a half until we could buy our own mower. Over the years, the garden has been singularly self-sufficient and without a line item in the town budget. The only involvement of the town money was an offer to upgrade our water pump so more gardeners could water simultaneously, and this money was not raised by town taxation but, rather, was allocated from a community grant from Medline. The fact that the town built a new road across an agricultural field to the garden cannot be blamed on the garden as a garden expense. The garden never asked for this road, and its construction, in my view, violated the Master Plan for Benedict Park on file with the State of New York. The town had other, less intrusive ways of dealing with dust settling on a neighbor’s pool, like paving the road they already had! The garden shed recently installed at the community garden cannot be considered a garden expense as it was given to the garden by the highway department which was going to trash it as obsolete. The garden, under the direction of Tom Steed, put a new roof on the shed and volunteers painted it and fixed it up at no expense to the town. The highway department does drop off woodchips for the garden and this is very appreciated, but they have to drop them somewhere! The compost bins are cleaned out by the highway department once a year, if that, but there are no additional hires needed to do so. I think the town did, once, buy some fence posts. That’s it. The garden, contrary to Mr. Adkin’s statement, has always done its own mowing – until he decided it was time for him to seize control of that activity. Unfortunately, this independence is about to change. If some have their way, all of this work will become taxpayer driven; the rototilling, the mowing, the fence maintenance, the water system, the plot assigning, the rule writing, the banking…all on the taxpayer dollar. The new Town Board will have stark choices.

This newspaper, in its December 14 issue, writes the new recreation director, Theron Adkins, “stated that he and the town board currently hold authority over the garden….” The Town Board certainly does, but he does not. Until there is a Town Board resolution granting him authority over the garden and the budget, he is not in control of anything regarding the garden. His civil service job description does not include managing environmental projects, or giving conservation advice, nor is he qualified in municipal park design. An individual supervisor and one councilwoman cannot override a previous resolution of the Board. It takes a majority of the board voting on a new resolution to do so. This has not happened. The disbanding of the CAC as the authenticating government overseer of the garden as an environmental project cannot be reversed by the will and whim of the recreation director, and/or the town supervisor acting as a minority. The disbanding of the CAC’s responsibility and authority and the subsequent seizure of the Garden Committee’s bank account were unequivocally overreaches by individuals not in authority to do so.

It is interesting to note here that the recreation director, after reviewing the bank records, found nothing untoward.

Since its inception, the Garden Committee has run itself. Yes there are disparate and conflicting personalities on the committee. That is the meaning of democracy. The Garden Committee was never given the chance to right the wrongs mentioned by recent complainers. The town cannot have it both ways. It cannot accept complaints that some plots are unkept and then turn around and complain that the Garden Committee was trying to enforce the regulations, so people complained about the enforcement! The thing is, if people are upset with the garden committee, a new set of officers can be elected the following spring. And, unlike the Town Board, the Garden Committee officers have term limits.

Great agitation has been made about the fact that a number of gardeners are from out of town, non-residents. For the record, according to the information given to me by the Town Clerk on November 28, residents control 73% of the 66 available plots. Only 27% of the plots are in the hands of non-residents. Because the town took Federal and State monies to buy the park, non-residents cannot be excluded. The originating Town Board had no issue with non-residents coming to the park. I will say if it had not been for nonresidents taking an interest in our community garden, there probably would not be a community garden. Non-residents helped build the fence, do the mowing and occupied elected positions on the Garden Committee when no one else would step forward to take the responsibility.

I trust the new Town Board will take the time to understand the issues and I hope the new supervisor, Mr. Brescia (welcome), understands I am at his service if he wishes my involvement. The Board can either expand the duties of the rec director and expand his budget or allow the Garden Committee a chance to regroup, with new, clear regulations, and with a newly elected administration coming from the Garden’s reorganization meeting in March.

The Town of Montgomery Community Garden, even with its oversubscription problem – the problem itself is a testament to its overall success – remains one of the oldest, largest, most beautiful community gardens in the entire state. For Adkins to propose, “I abolish the garden and maybe revisit it in the future. The other one is to take a year off, allow the ground to recover, start again in 2025.”, demonstrates to me his unthinking unsuitableness. Commentators called these plans “appalling.”

Allow the ground to recover? Allow the ground to recover from what? Good grief. These statements display a level of callous indifference to those who count on the garden for their food, their flowers, and yes their mental wellbeing. Someday I will tell you the story of gardener Albert. Albert had only one tattoo and having a tattoo was never his choice. Many see the garden as their safe zone.

There is much more to say and no space within which to say it.