WAUPUN — The Waupun City Council voted to execute an agreement to the next location of the Waupun Community Garden with the Waupun School District.
This comes after several weeks of work to draft a lease agreement between the City and the School District regarding the use of a plot at the High School campus, which required several layers of lawyering to produce.
The proposed location is on the southwest corner of the High School property along Mayfair Street, in the back area by the practice soccer fields.
“Lawyers are involved, we’re actually having to review all the supplemental agreements because people are going onto School District land, so they want to see down to the lowest level of detail how those agreements are written and how they’re going to be held,” Kathy Schlieve said. “We’ve got a few more things to get accomplished but we believe we can get this done.”
The purpose of the vote was to grant the City permission to sign the documents when the final drafts for the agreements are completed, in an attempt to expedite the process so they didn’t have to wait for the next meeting for approval.
Terri Respaljie from the Waupun Food Pantry, who has organized the Community Garden in previous years, offered to coordinate again the program if the lease is approved.
Originally, the Community Garden was planned to be placed on a vacant city-owned lot on Welch Street, but plans were halted after neighborhood residents came to the Council to express their concerns about how the garden might impact their neighborhood. Not wanting negativity to surround the Community Garden, Respalje decided to cancel plans for the year due to the short notice in finding a new suitable location.
The Council expressed hope that the new location on Mayfair Street will be a long-term solution to the Community Garden, unanimously voting for the City to execute the agreement with the School District.
The new location is near one of the utility sheds in the High School field with access to running water, so the Fire Department will no longer be required to set up and regularly refill tanks.
Once the agreement is signed, the Community Garden will begin preparations for the land and invite members of the community to stake out lots for the garden.
