Misplaced Charity

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 11/7/12.  Video of the meeting is available at: http://www.grantspassoregon.gov/Index.aspx?page=1449

  

Honorable Councilors, Mayor, and Manager:

          This City has tolerated illegal camping on its property for many years, ignoring calls from Officer Burge to limb-up the trees and clear out weeds east of Baker Park, for instance.  It has tolerated illegal camping on private property as well.

          I believe that this tolerance is caused by misplaced charity, feeling sorry for the people who have no place to live and don’t care to follow the rules that the Gospel Rescue Mission and UCAN impose on those whom they help.

          I say that this charity is misplaced because it refuses to recognize the two classes of homeless: orderly and disorderly.  Those who are orderly, even if they don’t care for the Mission’s rules, do not sleep in illegal campgrounds.  The camps are too disorderly and therefore dangerous.  They sleep in any little spot out of sight, and leave no sign of their presence afterwards, often getting roused by cops and told to move on.  They may beg, but they do not steal.  When given a chance by a charity to move into a place, they mostly take it and get out of the weather.

          The disorderly homeless prefer disorder, and create it as their habitat.  They leave trash everywhere, and where it stays, they know it is safe to camp.  They throw litter in the blackberries, the better to get it to stay.  If it gets old, it is a safe place to camp, because the owner doesn’t care. 

They steal what they need to live if they can get away with it, and beg for the rest.  They leave clothing as it becomes wet and pick up dry clothing for free from charities.   They break glass bottles as warning and defense against curious children and their parents.

          They particularly look for noxious weed growth like blackberries, scotch broom, and star thistle; the brush provides hiding places, and the thistles warn off the casual walker.

          The only defense against the disorderly homeless is to eliminate the hiding places that they camp in at night.  On Arizona prison work crew, we limbed up trees and cleared out weeds in the parks for security, leaving no places to hide. 

          Our Charter requires that our Manager enforce all city codes.  I read in the police blotter about a camp on Vine Street that police would not abate because it was outside the city limits.  Is it outside the UGB?  State law allows the city to enforce its code everywhere in the UGB.  Please enforce our codes against weeds, litter, and camping as far out as you can. 

           

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener       541-955-9040             rycke@gardener.com

Blackberries Are Taking Over Our Parks

Comment to the Josephine County Commissioners, 10-31-12. 

Honorable Commissioners:

          When I lived here in the mid-‘80s, I took a Wild Edible Plants class.  We took a field trip in the wilder parts of Schroeder Park, where I got a look at their leaf piles.  They were growing the biggest wild lettuce and radishes I had ever seen.  This convinced me that thick leaf mulch was the key to improving my dad’s garden soil, and I gathered dozens of bags of decomposing leaves that winter from the city’s leaf dump near Riverside Park, where we also did field trips in the woods.

          I would not have the opportunity for such insight today.  The County and City take all of their leaves to fill Jo Gro’s hungry maw.  The City even hauls them for residents for free, though it chokes on the influx each fall and can’t sell all the compost they make, even at a much lower price than Southern Oregon Compost.

          But we also cannot walk through the woods in the unimproved portions of Schroeder Park as we did in the 80’s, because nearly every space that is not lawn is covered with blackberries.  There are paths cut through them down to the river at intervals, and a path cut along the edge above high water, where one can walk through high walls of blackberries.  All around the rest of the park, there are few paths, just walls of blackberries and one cut-off piece of meadow on the south that one can see but not get to.  At the south end, across from the tennis courts, there appears to be a park building cut off from the park by blackberries, approachable only from the neighbor’s property.

          The same has happened to our city parks.  The wilder parts of nearly every large park are full of blackberries, stopping us from walking in our woods except along certain well-used paths.  Unfortunately, those paths are often used by disorderly people who throw their trash in the blackberries where it is difficult to pick up, making themselves comfortable and orderly people nervous.

          Some people think that because blackberries taste good and the plants are thorny, that they are useful hedge plants, fences, and space filler.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  They are ugly, and they attract litter which makes them uglier.  In our area, unless they are well-watered, the fruit is not worth picking.  They build up dead canes inside their mounds and hedges, which are a huge fire hazard.  They provide homes for vermin like rats.  And even berries not worth picking by people get eaten and spread by birds.  They are called a noxious weed for good reasons.  This County ought to take that designation by the state seriously, and clear them off its properties.

         

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener         541-955-9040    rycke@gardener.com

County has One Lone Gardener

Comment to the Josephine County Commissioners, 10-24-12. 

Honorable Commissioners:

          A while back, when I was complaining about the condition of the Fairgrounds, Commissioner Hare told us about how much he also hates weeds, but that the County has one lone gardener, with occasional help from community corrections work crews, for all county properties.  That’s a lot of properties.

          That’s one difference between the County and the City, as the City has no gardener, and various contractors and the parks department handle all city landscape maintenance.   The County has no contractors; the city has no qualified supervision of theirs. 

But your gardener also has no one to supervise him who knows his business.  His boss is the BOM manager, who has his head full with Buildings Operations and Maintenance.  The maintenance of landscapes is another specialty that he is probably little acquainted with, and your gardener works without knowledgeable direction or supervision.

Every employee or contractor needs feedback from his employer or customer about priorities and the quality of his work.  Even I need to ask my customer for executive decisions once in a while.    

Your gardener apparently does not get that kind of input, except occasionally from a citizen like me.  He appears to be more concerned with the opinion of unknown and ignorant people who never talk to him than the knowledgeable one in front of him.  He’s told me that he blows leaves into his beds at home, but is afraid of people saying that leaves in the courthouse beds look messy.

The other day, leaving your meeting, I told him that I was a happy woman, looking at the locust leaves gathering in the beds around the Anne Basker Auditorium, obviously blown there.  He said that he would eventually pick every one of those leaves up.  I turned away from my truck and went in the Courthouse to talk to the Commissioner who is liason to landscape maintenance, which turned out to mean the BOM manager. 

I talked to Commissioner Reedy, pointing out that it is unnecessary labor and materials expense to rake leaves out of beds and substitute Jo Gro.  Not only that, but leaves work better to suppress weeds than compost that makes a fine seed bed for windblown weeds.  He said that he would talk to the BOM manager about trying something different this year.

You have one gardener.  He obviously needs knowledgeable direction and supervision.  County properties in the city are outrageously violating city codes for weeds and litter, and he’s more concerned with counter-productively taking leaves out of shrub borders around the courthouse.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener         541-955-9040    rycke@gardener.com

Help Build a Dog Park on Greenwood

Commentary to the residents of Grants Pass, 10-11-12

       

Fellow Citizens:

          The September 27^th Daily Courier reported that our City Council has approved building a dog park at the end of Greenwood Avenue, across from the entrance to the Water Reclamation Plant and at the beginning of the paved trail along the river leading into Reinhart Volunteer Park.  It will include public bathrooms that have long been needed at the Greenwood Overlook.

          This being Grants Pass, the Council has budgeted $17,400 for this $30,500 project, in the expectation that citizens will step up with volunteer labor, materials, and money.  This being Grants Pass, I believe that the people will do their part if they know about it.

          This gardener brought a proposal for this project to the Council back in January, and was gratified that staff quickly brought a proposal to the Council, as a dog park near the Reinhart Volunteer Park was already in the Parks Master Plan.  But the Council balked at the cost, wanting to hear some buy-in from more citizens. 

In January, I volunteered to weed the dog park of such nuisances as goat heads and star thistle on my almost-daily walks.  With the buy-in of city staff, I started weeding out goat heads in that area and along the walking path as they started to sprout in early summer.  I started cutting star thistle below the crown as it began to bloom, noting that there is a long lag time in those plants between ugly, spiny buds and seeding out, allowing ample opportunity to kill them before they seed.  The same cannot be said for goat heads, but they also die when cut below the crown while blooming.  They seed fast, but the seeds are big enough to pick up.  With only 20 minutes a day at most to devote to the task, the area is not cleared of either weed yet, but there are a lot less of them than last year, and next year I should control the area well.

This park will not only be convenient to people who live near Greenwood, but also many people who come from other parts of town and other places to walk their dogs in Reinhart Park on its fine walking paths.  It will also cut off access to the park by joy riders who have accessed its paved trails from the open Greenwood end, where they  just drive around the bolsters in the path, and it will bring a higher level of landscape maintenance to the Water Reclamation Plant property, helping bring it up to City code.

If you want this dog park, please step up with money, materials, or work that you can do to help make it happen.  Contact Jeff Nelson at City Hall to donate: 450-6000 or JNelson@grantspassoregon.gov.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener       541-955-9040            rycke@gardener.com