Update on Cincinnati Farms motion...

(Sent by Email Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 1:59 PM)

Good Afternoon,

I want to thank everyone again for your continued interest and support for the “Cincinnati Farms” motion which moves that the City of Cincinnati lease out city-owned parcels of land for urban agriculture.

We had a really wonderful presentation on “Urban Gardening” in the Health, Education, and Environment Committee last week. The Civic Garden Association and Findlay Market gave great presentations on their programs. We also had Ms. Eileen Frechette come and share her personal experience with city gardening over the years, and UC graduate student Sara Phillips shared her research on city-supported urban agriculture programs in other cities.

We also were fortunate to have a great number of citizens come down to City Hall to testify about the importance of supporting urban agriculture from many perspectives, from health, to community building, to food security, etc. Not everyone spoke, but just making the effort to come to City Hall, and have all the seats filled in City Chambers is always an important statement.

This show of support was very important to let my colleagues on City Council know that urban agriculture is an issue that has broad interest and huge momentum right now here in Cincinnati.

The Finance Committee met later that afternoon, and the Cincinnati Farms motion received enough support to move to full Council for a vote. The meeting of full council was to meet Wednesday but was cancelled due to inclement weather.

Therefore, on Wednesday, February 4^th at 2pm at the next Council meeting the Cincinnati Farms motion will be voted on. We need 5 votes in order for it to pass.

If it passes, the next steps will be to identify where the 10-12 parcels will be leased out to city gardeners for the initial pilot project. I plan to convene a “stakeholder” meeting soon after the passage of the motion which will help us figure out where there is interest for a garden.

If you would like to share your support of this legislation you can email City Council and/or you can come to City Hall no later than 1:15pm on February 4^th to fill out a speaker card to address City Council for up to 2 minutes. Please allow time for parking and to pass through security.

Many of you have written in to share your valuable ideas on how to implement this program. I appreciate you sharing your expertise, and am taking in all your information as we move forward.

If you have any additional questions/comments you can email me, or contact my legislative aide Michelle Dillingham at 352-2453.

-David Crowley