SEQUIM — One small, new project stood out among the big, old ones talked about during the Sequim City Council’s special meeting this week.
The Spruce Street Pocket Park, a strip of green between Sunnyside and Sequim avenues, could turn into a blooming, food-producing spot, to at least one council member’s mind.
Mayor Laura Dubois, a proponent of local produce and other environmentally friendly ideas, envisions Sequim’s second community garden in the city-owned Spruce Street space, she said at Monday’s meeting.
She’s already huddled with Liz Harper, an organizer of the original Community Organic Garden of Sequim, or COGS.
That garden, which rents about 35 10-by-10-foot plots to all kinds of growers, opened last summer.
The 1/5-acre space is a grand success, Harper said, adding that she and COGS drivers Bob Caldwell and Pam Larsen have always hoped for a string of community gardens all over the city.
Waiting list
By May of this year, all the garden’s plots and raised beds were taken, and the organizers had a waiting list.
“I probably took 70 calls from people who wanted plots or wanted to know more about the garden,” Harper said.
She believes there’s plenty of appetite among Sequim’s apartment and condominium dwellers for places to grow vegetables, flowers and herbs.
The city of Sequim, led by associate planner Joe Irvin, has a plot in the first garden and donates the fresh produce to the Sequim Food Bank.
Now the city could run a second space, renting out plots, building raised beds and sending participants to organic-gardening school.
The COGS crew teaches eight gardening classes each year, and Harper said they would welcome more students.
Sequim Planning Director Dennis Lefevre told the City Council on Monday night that the Spruce Street space, while small, would be conducive to a community garden.
“We would look at doing a coordinated effort” with the COGS caretakers, he added.
Lefevre said Jeff Edwards, Sequim’s parks coordinator, would present an overview of costs for a city-run garden during the Aug. 10 council meeting at 6 p.m. in the Sequim Transit Center, 190 W. Cedar St.
If the council consents, site preparation could be under way before the end of the year.
Other projects
That’s lightning-quick compared to Sequim’s many other projects. There’s the new City Hall, “on the table since 1977,” interim city manager Linda Herzog reminded the council.
Also on the citywide work program — a list of jobs to be tackled this year into next — are the downtown “sub-area plan,” discussed for years, remodeling of the Sequim Police Department that was planned last year but now expected to be finished around February and expansion of the Sequim Urban Growth Area to include Battelle’s Marine Research Operations laboratories on Sequim Bay.
The Battelle initiative, designed to extend city water and sewer service to the labs so they can expand, is scheduled for City Council review and public input in late October, with a public hearing on annexation next March.
The sub-area plan, to include new standards for high-density housing and pedestrian-friendly design downtown, will go to a consultant whose draft will come back to the council for a public hearing in April.
Planning for the City Hall project, priced at $10 million back in late 2007, has been postponed until September because, according to Herzog, the city’s budget picture is muddy right now.
And after years of struggle over where to construct what’s envisioned as a civic center, the council must figure out not only a location but also the size of the building and how to finance it. Herzog estimated that process will take until May 2010.
She’ll be gone by then, her nine-month contract having expired Sept. 3. Waldron & Co., a Seattle search firm, is “absolutely on schedule” in its efforts to recruit a permanent city manager, Herzog said.
Waldron is narrowing a field of permanent city manager candidates and will discuss finalists with the council during an executive session July 13.
The members should be able to conduct interviews in August and hire a new Sequim chief by mid-September.
The new manager will grapple with a 2010 budget hard-hit by the economic downturn, plus the City Hall puzzle and some 43 other projects on the citywide work program.
Dubois, at the end of Herzog’s report, thanked her and the rest of the city staff for outlining “where we are and where we’re going.”
Capping her comments, Herzog added, “I think we’re pretty much maxed out for the moment.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
