February 2023

 Eagle Heights Garden Committee Minutes

February 8, 2023  7 PM

Remote Meeting

7:00 Present: Lily, Ric, Ann, Ninja, Megan, Jolene, Barb L, Barb A and Karen.

Minutes  Motion by Lily and seconded by Ann to approve the January 2023 minutes. The minutes were approved. 

Registrar Update

Opening day will be March 25th.  Ric, Ninja , Lily and Barb A said they would help with Orientations.  Orientation is now mandatory for new gardeners due to too many problems with new gardeners gardening in the wrong plot.  If the weather is really terrible, opening day will be pushed to April 1st.

The Irrigation Subcommittee will be Megan, Lily and Ric.

Lily says we have 308 renewals and 53 new gardeners.  This rate is about the same as last year.

Seed Fair

The Seed Fair will be April 8th in person at the Community Center.  Nou, from the Gardens Network will come to the Seed Fair to discuss their mission. 

We have had a request from Let’s Grow Stuff at PBS for filming in their own plot.  They will need a media permit and a research permit from UW.  They have applied for a plot pending these approvals.  The Committee agreed that their plot neighbors need to have their privacy.

Food Pantry Donations

There was discussion about reviving the food pantry donations.  Possibilities include Open Seat, which Jolene says comes to the Gardens every Wednesday in season.  Another possibility is MOMS, which Barb A will check on.  It would be good to have a donation box where donations can not be removed.

Lily contacted Scott from Gardens to Be about the plant sales and he said he would not be able to do it this year.  So Blue Moon will be doing both Plant Sales.

Monthly Calendar

The mowers will be serviced in March.  The irrigation sub-committee was formed in February.

Garden Worker Report

Megan said the garden tool order has been completed.   Many short garden forks were missing.  We had 26 and she could only find 11.  Many forks are left at the leaf piles and disappear under a new load of leaves.  A T-post with a hook to store the fork at each leaf pile could help with this problem.

Another problem is University Houses residents taking tools to work on the plots at their houses.  Much discussion about tool labeling ensued.  Jolen suggested that we label the tools with the garden name, so UW Housing staff can help with returning the tools to the University Houses shed.  A UW property tag would probably not work, it would have to be garden property. Wood burning would be a permanent labeling solution.  We could also number our tools.

Garden Worker Hiring

Jolene reports that hiring Garden Workers is proceeding as planned. The target is for the new Garden Workers to start early to mid-March.

Adjourned about 7:25 pm

Submitted by Karen, subject to correction by the Garden Committee  

January 2023

 Eagle Heights Garden Committee Minutes

January 11, 2023  7 PM

Remote Meeting

7:00 Present: Lily, Ric, Jessica, Ann, Ron, Ninja, Megan, Jolene, Barb L, Barb A and Karen.

Minutes  Motion by Ron and seconded by Barb A to approve the December 2022 minutes. The minutes were approved. 

Registrar Update

Lily says we have 175 renewals and thirty new gardeners. Many gardeners at University Houses plots in the A and F rows want to move their plots due to shade. We should also redesign the 500 rows at Eagle Heights so all the back corner posts meet. This should be done at the end of the season.

Joe at UW Housing will service our two mowers at no charge and will pick them up.  UW Housing gives us 8-10 hours of labor every year.  We will have to wait because they are in the back of the sheds.

Nou, from the Gardens Network will come to the February meeting to discuss the 2023 Garden Summit and their proposal for EHG involvement.

Lily contacted Scott from Gardens to Be about the plant sales.  Blue Moon could be a backup if he is not available.

Monthly Calendar

The mowers will be serviced in March.  The irrigation sub-committee will be formed in February.

Leaf Pile Removal by July 1

Purple Cow will take the leaves for a $625 tipping fee.  1-800-got-junk could do the transportation for a fee.  We could ask Shorewood if they could transport it and perhaps they already have paid the yearly tipping fee.  We believe this is where Shorewood takes our weeds.

Garden Worker Report

Megan said the garden tool order will be ready next week and the tools will come by February.  

Garden Worker Hiring

Jolene reports there are 8 applicants and the posting closes on Monday night.  She says the applicants do not have a lot of gardening experience, but one is an Arborist.  We will probably have enough applicants. The plan is for the garden workers to mow the paths this year.  

Budget and Fee Increase

In the December meeting we discussed the budget. Since 2021 we have been using our considerable savings for operating costs.  We have enough money to get through 2023.  Salaries and operating costs have gone up.  We have had a separate mower employee who did a wonderful job but we had to pay overtime and benefits which we can no longer afford.  

Plot fees have stayed the same since 2012.  In order to have money to operate in 2024, the fees will need to be increased. We cannot raise the fee for the 2023 gardening season and we do not need to.

Discussion ensued. Jolene said that wage increases have had a large effect on the budget.  The porta potty cost will probably go up.  Row cover has gone up.  For the gardens to break even, we should sell 20 foot pieces for $5.  Before we sold 24 foot pieces for $5. 

Previous records show that FH King was to pay a share of the water costs based on their area of gardening space.  This has not happened for some years.  Lily will contact them to see about resuming payments.  We probably want to wait about subsidizing compost sales.

Motion by Karen and seconded by Megan to increase the fees for the 2024 gardening year to balance the budget.

UW Apartment Resident -                 $47 full plot     $35 half plot

Staff, Alumni, Community member- $67 full plot     $50 half plot

No workday fee-                         $40

Passed unanimously.

The new fees could be presented to the GOC in July.

Jolene suggested it would be useful to do a town hall meeting at the community center about the fee increase so all gardeners understand the need for the increase. 

There is an Eagle Heights Garden UW Foundation account that has a good balance.  In previous years people have donated to the account.  There was discussion about using the foundation account to upgrade the plumbing system.  We sometimes also get donations when people overpay on their application and they do not request a refund. 

Ric knows of a potential garden worker that does not use computers very much.  Ninja and Jessica will tell him about the job opening.  Jolene said some computer use is required for the position.  

The maintenance request site worked well at the beginning and then tapered off. Lily will add the request link to the weekly email.  

Adjourned about 8pm

Submitted by Karen, subject to correction by the Garden Committee   

December 2022

 Eagle Heights Garden Committee Minutes

December 14, 2022  7 PM

Remote Meeting

7:00 Present: Lily, Ric, Alan, Jessica, Ann, Jolene, Barb L, Barb A and Karen.

Minutes  Motion to approve the November 2022 minutes. The minutes were approved. 

Registrar Update

Lily suggests we limit the Discussion list to current gardeners.  The committee agreed. 

UW Housing would like us to have a demographic survey of the gardeners.  We agreed that the survey should be sent to each garden plot.

After some discussion it was agreed to not participate in the 2023 Garden Expo.

Budget Review

Since 2021 we have been using our considerable savings for operating costs.  We have enough money to get through 2023.  Salaries and operating costs have gone up.  We have had a separate mower employee who did a wonderful job but we had to pay overtime and benefits which we can no longer afford.  

Plot fees have stayed the same since 2012.  In order to have money to operate in 2024, the fees will need to be increased. We cannot raise the fee for the 2023 gardening season and we do not need to.

Lily presented several budgets for discussion.  2018 as an example year of the last budget she could find any record of without the disruption of the pandemic. In addition to the pandemic, we've also had disruption from garden worker shortages but we need a new budget because of rising costs. There is one proposed budget for 2023 and for 2024 there are two; one budget without raising fees to show the amount of debt we'd go into and one proposed budget with the fees raised to avoid going in to debt .  Sometimes it is difficult to predict the garden spending patterns because they are dependent on weather and how much the employees work.  The 2023 budget has higher portapotty fees and UW Plumbing costs. The income for 2023 is slightly lower because workday fees were combined for 2022- 2023. Wages and supplies are also higher in all the future budgets. The 2023 plumbing fee is estimated as a little higher than the theoretical 2024 fee because we planned large projects for 2023. 

Discussion ensued.  It was agreed that relying on no workday fees as a source of income is not wise because we cannot predict the amount accurately.  The administrative costs for half and whole plots are the same, so half plots have to be higher than half the cost of a full plot.  We used to have a big cushion and we will have spent it down at the end of 2023.

The Garden Oversight Committee will need to approve our budget and fee increases.  The proposed budget options should be placed on the January 2023 agenda for discussion.  Our decision can be reviewed in July 2023.

Other Items

Lily has started a yearly calendar of tasks which will be shared. 

Leaf Pile

The Wisconsin DNR wants all the leaves removed by July 1st of every year so we do not have an ongoing compost pile.  A compost pile is not allowed because there is a municipal well just north of the gardens.  Lily had hoped that FH King would have used more of the leaves.  In our agreement with Shorewood, they remove our weeds and bring us their leaves. Lily heard that the weeds go to Purple Cow, but she could be wrong.The  MOU with Shorewood says they take them to the landfill. This could be old information. It also says the leaves delivered must all be shredded.

In the future we need to make sure that University Houses are well supplied with leaves. Deliveries cannot be made to University Houses when the access road is wet as the trucks get stuck.

Ideally we should get close to no leaves in the summer.  We need to manage the amount of leaves we get and ask gardeners to get the leaves they will need for the season after the leaves are moved by July 1st.

Lily will explore ways to make sure the leaf pile is removed by July 1st.  Jolene says we have 10 hours of labor from UW Housing Grounds every year.  Perhaps Purple Cow will take the leaves in July.

The Committee agrees it is a top priority to have the leaves gone in July.

Motion by Barb L and seconded by Ric to adjourn. Adjourned

Submitted by Karen, subject to correction by the Garden Committee