Fredonia City Council considers plans for a community garden

FREDONIA - The meet­ing of the Fredonia city council started at its regu­lar 7 p.m. time on February 17, with good attendance. During the public comment portion of the meeting, a member of the public stood to inquire on for-sale prop­erties in the area, posing plans to construct afford­able single-family housing in the area. The council di­rected the inquirer to plan­ning and zoning to get on their regular agenda, after which the public comment portion concluded.

The first action item on the agenda was a discussion of a new library building, improving access to the library, establishing more recreation areas, a confer­ence room and a computer lab. Said Sheena Cram with the Fredonia Library, “You’d be surprised at our checkout numbers … espe­cially families, come in and read at the library. We keep track of those numbers too, when someone just comes in and references material without checking things out.” Per Cram, the current library building, now 40 years old, suffers from lack of up-to-standards parking spaces and direct expo­sure to the roads which can present safety risks for children. The library staff provided a number of plans for potential properties available in Fredonia, which the coun­cil accepted and agreed to further discussion on the appropriate candidate plot.

The following item on the agenda was repre­sentative of a group of Fredonia citizens coming together with a proposal for a community garden. “There have been some struggles with the food bank of late, and we wanted to come up with a way we could help with the community … I wanted to come in and see if the city had land that we might be able to use for a community garden.” The council agreed to consider potential properties, as well as some anti-wildlife and security measures that would be required for a community garden to be feasible.

Given the proposals made during the public comment period, the coun­cil then discussed a poten­tial work meeting with the planning and zoning commission to discuss and align priorities for small plots of land in the town.

In preparation for up­coming council meetings, the council set plans for work meetings on top­ics like emergency pre­paredness, water supply security and utilities, after which the meeting adjourned.