Tusten board votes to take insurance from community garden

Posted 8/21/12

NARROWSBURG, NY — At last month’s Tusten town board meeting, Councilwoman Jane Luchsinger presented to the board the idea of revoking town coverage of insurance for sub-committees of the Tusten …

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Tusten board votes to take insurance from community garden

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NARROWSBURG, NY — At last month’s Tusten town board meeting, Councilwoman Jane Luchsinger presented to the board the idea of revoking town coverage of insurance for sub-committees of the Tusten Local Development Corporation (TLDC). One of those groups is the Tusten Heritage Community Garden (THCG), now in the midst of growing season, in which about 60 people participate. THCG chairs Anie Stanley and Juliette Hermant were not at that meeting, and also had no prior knowledge that Luchsinger was going to bring up the issue.

Luchsinger, the new chair of the TLDC, said the reason for her request is that the TLDC recently met with Helen Budrock of Sullivan Renaissance. At this meeting, they gleaned information about how a local development corporation should be run, and she said they discovered that some of their procedures had been improper. In particular, the town is not supposed to pay insurance premiums for groups under the umbrella of the TLDC, such as the community garden, the Honey Bee Festival and Act Underground, among others.

TLDC meetings are held once a month the same day of and before the regular town board meeting. Last month, Stanley and Hermant said Luchsinger canceled the TLDC meeting at the last minute with no explanation. Therefore, they did not get a chance to hear Luchsinger’s plan before it was too late. At that time, the town board voted in favor of taking away the insurance from those groups.

Stanley and Hermant first heard of this ddecision when they received a letter from town clerk Nicole Peters notifying them that the insurance for the community garden would end in 30 days. They said they reached out to Luchsinger and town supervisor Carol Wingert, but the two did not respond. Stanley and Hermant sent two letters; neither received a response.

It wasn’t until this month’s TLDC and town board meetings that the issue was brought up. Stanley and Hermant said that at the TLDC meeting, Luchsinger put the insurance issue at the end of the agenda, and when they got to it they ran out of time to have a discussion. The issue was then brought up at the town board meeting.

Supervisor Wingert said she talked to the town attorney, and he agreed with the board’s decision to end the insurance to sub-committees of the TLDC. She said they do insure Town of Tusten-related entities, which currently includes the TLDC and the Tusten Youth Commission, and most likely will soon include the Narrowsburg Beautification Group. Wingert said, “We were not doing things properly in that realm.” The town gave insurance to the THCG in 2012. Stanley and Hermant as well as the town board said insuring the community garden does not raise the town’s premium, so it costs them nothing.

Stanley and Hermant at the meeting asked why the board doesn’t think the THCG is a town entity. The response was that it’s not a town-run operation. But Stanley and Hermant objected. They said the garden is open to the public. There are currently 21 beds and 18 members, there are public workshops, and over 60 people are involved such as the advisory committee, volunteers and Master Gardeners. The garden sits on land owned by the Tusten-Cochecton Library, and they have a lease with them.

The garden is non-profit and the operating cost is less than $2,000 per year. Part of the reason why the THCG joined the TLDC is because of the non-profit status, meaning they can apply for grants. There are membership fees, and that money goes toward purchasing tools, soil, hay mulch, workshops, fence maintenance, watering system hoses and a new pergola, which was designed by architect Karl Wasner and had been planned to be built soon.

Hermant and Stanley looked into getting insurance on their own. However, the problem is that they are a part of the TLDC, and insurance companies that they inquired with said they could not provide the garden with insurance. They said they will have to quit the TLDC to get insurance. “They took insurance away in the middle of the season. We could have been doing better things. This is blocking the pergola from being made,” Stanley said.

Luchsinger and the board maintained their position that the community garden is not a town project. Luchsinger said it only serves 21 households, which is not enough for the betterment of the town. However, Councilman Tony Ritter said, “I don’t see any negatives to a community garden.”

Indeed, negatives may not be glaringly obvious, but that hasn’t stopped the little community garden from being rife with controversy. Initially run by Andrea Reynosa, it started in 2012. A year later, Councilman Ned Lang claimed that the garden paid its workers as independent contractors and did not take tax deductions from their pay.

At the town board meeting, Supervisor Wingert came up with some solutions. She said the garden can become a committee of the town. They would have to report to the board every month, audit their accounting, and create a budget line item. Hermant and Stanley said they would consider it.

After the meetings, Hermant and Stanley released this statement to The River Reporter: “After careful consideration of the facts by attending both TLDC and Town of Tusten board meeting on July 12, 2016 we have come to the conclusion that the withdrawal of the insurance is motivated by reasons both personal and political.

“We are grateful to Supervisor Wingert for extending the insurance policy for an additional month, until August 20th. However, we intend to ask the board of the Town of Tusten to extend the policy until the end of this season, so the THCG does not incur hardship in the middle of the short growing season.”

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