Melissa testified this afternoon at a Parks Department hearing regarding the Department’s proposed community gardens rules. She expressed her concerns that the rules do not go far enough to provide the protections that our gardens need. Her testimony can be viewed below.
Additionally, we recently created a new page which contains a list of community gardens in District 8. Our district is among those that have the greatest numbers of community gardens.Click here to view that page.
Last month I registered a complaint with the New York Mets on two issues: (1) their coming to the Pleasant Avenue garden with the team manager and two players to do some gardening and not having invited the councilwoman Melissa Mark Viverito — who, of all people chairs the Parks and Recreation Committee (Major Bloomberg was present and just wanted to bloom all by himself — politics as usual, it seems) and 2) for insisting on calling East Harlem just Harlem. This has been a pervasive trend lately and there are cultural and historical significances that merit the area being identified as it should be.
As the councilwoman’s Testimony points out the majority of the gardens are located in East Harlem or better yet, Spanish Harlem if the word East is not in fashion. And to boot, I am proud of the councilwoman in her activism in this issue.
You can view a map of the gardens in District 8 at the OASISnyc mapping website: http://bit.ly/a6vHhk You can also search for any garden in the city and map it at http://www.oasisnyc.net/garden/gardensearch.aspx We provide a tutorial here http://oasisnyc.gc.cuny.edu/index.php/Community_Gardens_2010 Hope that’s helpful for your consituents.