Seniors Decry Loss Of Botanical Home
By Jason Banrey
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| The Senior Garden is pricing out some of its members and is soon to be permanently replaced. |
Seniors who enjoy the use of Queens Botanical Garden for planting vegetables and flowers believe they are being “financially extorted,” after being told they will now have to pay $150 for plots that were always free.
“This is financial extortion,” said Joseph Siegel, 71, of Forest Hills, who has been a member of the Senior Garden for a decade and helped construct the plots.
In January, QBG notified Senior Garden members of the introduction of the annual fee to use plots which were free to them for 45 years.
In addition to the new fee, seniors will also have to pay a membership fee which increased from $30 to $45 as well as $1 for parking each time they use the garden’s lot.
Siegel refuses to pay the combination of fees that he says will amount to over $200 a year just to utilize the garden’s facilities.
After finding out about the new costs, Siegel declined to extend his membership at the garden and called the QBG’s decision to increase fees “illegal.”
QBG Executive Director Susan Lacerte calls the introduction of an annual fee for plots and the increase in the cost of membership fair, especially during a time when the garden has seen their budget fall from $3.2 million to $2.9 million.
“We’ve been making salary cuts, imposing furloughs on our own staff,” said Lacerte. “Seniors aren’t the only ones feeling the effects of our financial woes.”
Lacerte has worked with members of the Senior Garden for 16 years, subsidizing the private group and, in collaboration with seniors, trying to develop fundraisers to alleviate QBG’s financial woes.
Over the years the garden has not been able to keep up with city and state budget cuts and began to charge visitors and members under an agreement with the city, an authority they have as a non-profit group.
Lacerte stressed that Senior Garden members still have options that will help them pay for the annual fees and urged them to take advantage of them.
In exchange for volunteering four hours a week from April 1 to June 30 as a greeter, seniors will receive a reduced rate of $50 instead of $150. Seniors can also apply for a scholarship established by the garden to help pay their annual fees.
Although the Senior Garden will be phased out over the next year, QBG Deputy Director Patty Kleinberg said seniors are more than welcome to join the Family Garden, which will debut in 2012.
Ultimately, the Garden is not trying to get rid of seniors, added Kleinberg, but rather is trying to expand the use of the garden to a broader range of people in the community.
“Since QBG funding has been cut from 40 to 50 percent since 2000, we have had to learn to survive on our own,” said Kleinberg. “We’ve been getting requests about having access to the land from various community groups.”
Kleinberg also asserted that once QBG transitions the Senior Garden into the Family Garden, the non-profit group will be eligible for various additional federal grants that will help it develop programs for more members of the community.
Despite the open invitation to be apart of the Family Garden, many senior members says they will not be able to meet QBG financial demands.
“A lot of us come from modest financial backgrounds,” said Senior Garden Chairman Alfred Rosenblatt, 73. “This is their way of trying to get rid of us.”
On several occasions over the years, seniors have helped provide the garden with donations of money, time and equipment.
After last year’s tornado destroyed a substantial swath of the foliage in the garden, members pulled together more than $1,000 said Lola McLinden, 91, former chairwoman of the senior garden for almost 10 years.
“They’ve always put pressure on us to raise money,” said McLinden. “This is an act of desperation and they’re not going to get any more money out of us.”
McLinden will stay on at the Senior Garden for its final year and pay $195, the combination of the membership and fee for her plot, a luxury only a few seniors can afford.
“It’s insulting in a way,” said McLinden. “We use to be a program that was considered an asset to QBG now some of us will never be here again.”
Reach Intern Jason Banrey at jbanrey@queenstribune.com or (718) 357-7400, Ext. 128.