The hand-off of the San Pedro All Year Community Gardens from the old pay-to-garden gardeners to the city was handled with recklessness, and now it has been over 950 days since the garden has had no water. Some do, but many don’t get water.
It has been over 2 years since the city has taken over, and still no water.
Let’s review…
The City took over about the end of 2013. They shoved this workload onto 3 city officials. The only official person I have talked to in-person was Nicole Deering, the City Manager for the San Pedro City. The other names I have heard was Jacob and another person.
Since the Gardens were not their expertise and were not trained on how to deal with a garden in transition, they simply relied on Carlos who was appointed to help out with the Garden. This is a volunteer position which the term was for 2 years before someone new was allowed to have the position.
It has been over 4 years Carlos has had this position and unfit. He actively promotes gerrymandering, he intimidates people, does not communicate to gardeners of change, he does not attend meetings, he is biased toward certain gardeners, he does not include all gardeners in meetings, he translates from Spanish to English in different words, and he simply cannot get anything accomplished. He is unfit for the job and the City of San Pedro allows an unqualified person to represent them on issues for official announcements for the Garden. This is an important role and this is who they pick. His time is up.
So, here we are with city officials who are unqualified to run a garden and they appoint an unqualified person to be their appointed spokesperson.
This is not a very good representation for Joe Buscaino since he is letting down eco-gardeners by delegating this important job to random people. You are letting down 300 or more gardeners.
I represent those who are too afraid to speak up, the old, the migrants, the people do not speak English, those who are afraid of Carlos, yes they are afraid of him, the non-tech savvy, the uninformed, those without cell phones, and those who just want to garden and not deal with politics.
The best option is to involve gardeners from San Pedro who can make a real difference. Remove all the “old” administrators and start over. Let the gardeners make the garden decisions, and the San Pedro City be our alley to navigate political nuances that they know best.