Racine Urban Garden Network

Since attendance at Friday's meeting was minimal, possibly due to the weather, here are some key findings. The meeting was very interesting. One of our weaknesses was addressed when Racine/Kenosha Community Action Project basically told us that they are willing and able to insure each landowner donating use of their site for a garden project against potential lawsuits from users of that garden site. While this does not shield RUGN from the potential suit, it does protect the landowner from liability, and it still might be possible to protect RUGN. CAP's main concern was that someone else manage the acceptance of land donations and subsequent "rentals" by gardeners and the management of them. They also are more than willing to provide harvesting on the sites to provide for local food pantries, as they are already doing so at other functional sites.

I am hoping that we can manage most of this renting/leasing and application documentation through the internet to save actual man(woman)-hours, so we might consider trying to find a professional web developer willing to donate time to perfect the online application/approval process.....

I suggest we basically copy the Milwaukee Urban Garden format for potential land users, and try to imitate what we saw on an Ohio Urban Garden website for site location and selection (unfortunately right now I don't remember the site-I'll have to look it up and get back on this)....   

With the liability covered, we then need to consider tool rentals (free, but signed out) for each location, how to secure each site, if needed, maybe have signs/posters at each site location, etc....

I still think it would be nice to take advantage of that 5 acre site that was offered by the interstate possibly for a fall crop if only for the potential advertising effect it could have for our group...

And, we still need to decide upon the legal status of our group...club? LLC? non-profit? association?