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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Resistance to KC gardening measure in full bloom
  • Date: Wed, 26 May 2010 16:19:40 -0600


Resistance to KC gardening measure in full bloom
By MIKE HENDRICKS The Kansas City Star
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/05/25/1971476/resistance-to-kc-gardening-measure.html#ixzz0p4oWPDQe

Vegetable gardening seems so, well, wholesome.

Who would have guessed that growing spinach, Swiss chard and rutabagas would
become such a source of controversy in Kansas City?

I just got off the phone with a woman who worries that this plan to allow
people to sell homegrown produce from their driveways would lead to violent
crime.

Stickups!

Let gardeners sell salad greens from card tables out by the curb, and pretty
soon they’ll be pistol-whipped for that other kind of lettuce.

And what about traffic snarls caused by strangers trolling neighborhoods
looking to score zucchini and sweet corn? Some worry about that, too.

“It kind of surprised me,” Councilman John Sharp said of the opposition that
has sprouted in the past month to his proposal to encourage and regulate
so-called urban agriculture.

“We’ve tried to listen to everyone’s concerns,” he said.

But some of those people will never be satisfied by even the very reasonable
compromise crafted by Sharp and Councilman Ed Ford.

Among the highlights are added restrictions for community gardens and CSAs
(short for the quasi-commercial Community Supported Agriculture
arrangements), along with dates between which home gardeners could sell
fruits and vegetables from their front yards.

Real estate agents complained that previous legislation was too broad. So the
compromise plan from Sharp and Ford makes it more difficult to set up a CSA,
where people contribute their land and labor to growing food for a group.
You’d now need a special use permit in residential areas.

The new restrictions would keep community gardens, or their sales operations,
out of the front yards of occupied residences.

There would be no front-yard prohibition for individual home gardeners and
community gardens on vacant properties in the inner city, where a vegetable
garden would be a big improvement over a weed patch.

But any ordinance that allows vegetable stands in neighborhoods won’t pass
muster with Stacey Johnson-Cosby, a real estate agent who is vice president
of a coalition of south-side neighborhood groups.

“My core issue is they allow on-site sales,” she said.

Another sticking point is the issue that started this whole discussion in the
first place last fall. The new rules would still allow volunteers and hired
help to work in gardens owned by others.

I’d like to think the council would err in favor of gardeners.

But when Johnson-Cosby and others worry aloud that people’s property values
would suffer if they lived next to a vegetable stand, don’t expect the City
Council to boldly move ahead.






  • [Livingontheland] Resistance to KC gardening measure in full bloom, Tradingpost, 05/26/2010

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