The Stafford Garden Club is looking for answers as to why thousands of dollars in landscaping at the Town Hall and at the Post Office on Rt. 237 was ripped out and replaced with a gravel garden and large boulders in the fall.
According to Councilman Ron Panek, the cost of trimming at the Post Office and the Town Hall was out of this world, $6,000/$3,000 per trip.
“We bid it and they fulfilled the bid,” says Supervisor Robert Clement.
“It looked good after they were done, they sent the bill and before the ink dried the weeds started to grow.”
When asked if the work was supervised by someone from the Town there was no real answer.
“If you spent $6,000 at your house and you hired someone to do it and it turned out like it did, you wouldn’t hire them again and neither would you be happy about it and you wouldn’t drop the ball on it,” says Town resident Sandra Swanson.
“We didn’t,” says Supervisor Clement.
“We tore everything out, that was our response to it, right or wrong, fun, money or marbles, that’s what we did.”
The topic of trimming and weeding had been discussed for 5 years according to Supervisor Clement and the town used three different landscapers in three years with varying results.
The Stafford Garden Club wondered why they were not approached by the Town Board for advice before the landscaping was ripped out and replaced with rocks and boulders.
“If the Town had wanted to improve the plantings around the Town Hall it could have contacted the Garden Club,” says Co-President Sue Briggs.
“Many members are Master Gardeners and have years of experience with garden design. This readily available resource of knowledge was ignored and the results speak for themselves.”
According to Supervisor Clement, the Garden Club has been silent for years about what to do around the Town Hall.
“The weed situation and the plantings and everything, there was too many of them and weed maintenance is just impossible and it looked like hell.”
The Garden Club for years has maintained the plantings around the welcome to Stafford sign on the eastern side free of charge. Those plantings were also ripped out.
“Imagine our dismay when the plant material that our Garden Club paid for was discarded,” says Briggs.
“It would have been a simple matter to notify the club that the Town had other plans for that area, but no thought was given to the citizens who have given so generously of our time to make Stafford a more beautiful place.”
According to the Town Board, the Ladies Auxiliary donated the landscaping at the Town of Stafford sign after they wrote a letter to the Board requesting to replace the old landscaping.
Offering an olive branch to the group, Supervisor Clement requested the Garden Club’s assistance in moving forward with the gravel garden in the spring.
“Now that the door is open, maybe you could suggest what we should do out here,” says Supervisor Clement.
Briggs responded, “Well you kind of exchanged one problem for another. It would help to have big pots with plants, but these have to watered regularly. The fact that you have that fine stone, it will be a year before that is full of weeds and that is harder to keep up than if you just pulled it, maybe some small trees, you have to do something.”
“We need a budget for flowers and containers,” says Carole Grooms Co-President of the Garden Club.
According to Town Clerk Julie Scheuerlein, $600 was spent on flowers and plants last year.
“So get to the bottom of this, can we have a meeting with someone to where the $600 is going to go and what are we going to do, so when spring comes we know what we are doing,” says Grooms.
Supervisor Clement promised to open the door of communications with the Garden Club and thanked them for their input at the meeting.
“We will work on this over the winter and will be ready to go in the spring when we get something approved,” says Briggs.