School board extends Ingalls garden lease

LYNN – The Lynn School Committee voted unanimously Wednesday to extend the city’s contract with the North Shore Food Project, keeping a controversial vegetable garden at the Ingalls Elementary School in place until at least 2011, and effectively putting an end to one neighbor’s effort to have the small farm removed.The decision should come as no surprise to anyone following the efforts of Chatham Street resident Marguerite Puleo, who claims the garden is directly responsible for gang activity resulting in vandalism to her home and vehicle as members of the School Committee have been working with the police and the North Shore Food Project since her initial complaint to brainstorm ways to keep the neighborhood safe, without sacrificing the garden.Puleo claims that teenagers have adopted the lightly secured area as a place to hang out and harass abutters, stealing vegetables and vandalizing both school and private property – a problem she claims began only when the garden was opened in the secluded rear area of the school yard in 2003.But others dispute Puleo’s claims and while no one is denying a serious gang problem exists in that area of the city, there is a general consensus the problem would persist with or without the garden.”I can totally sympathize with Mrs. Puleo because I have experienced a lot of the same issues,” Fearless Avenue resident Lauren Conley said at a recent meeting of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee. “But that farm is not the problem, gangs and drugs are the problem and an organization like (the Food Project) is part of the solution.”Defenders of the garden are also quick to bring up the positive side of the North Shore Food Project’s efforts, which, along with providing summer jobs for teenagers and the unique opportunity for Ingalls students to learn while working in the garden, result in thousands of pounds of food each summer that goes right back to the community through the annual farmer’s market.Overall, abutters who attended the Public Safety meeting last week agreed with Conley, and told members that the problem has gone on well before the garden was ever opened on school grounds.”One gentleman got up and said he had kids throwing rocks through his windows 40 years ago,” said School Committee member John E. Ford following that meeting. “I think most of them understand that the problem isn’t this garden.”Because of a massive outpouring of support for the garden after Puleo’s complaints, the School Committee’s Building and Grounds Subcommittee voted recently to explore grant funding in an effort to increase the security on Ingalls School grounds.The new plan calls for the addition of an eight-foot gated fence, new lighting and security cameras, which members hope will reduce some of the teenage gathering and vandalism, at least in the area of the garden.A new contract with the North Shore Food Project was necessary to continue with the security plans, as the original pact allowing the organization to use the land expires in April.While the security cameras and large fencing should help keep teenagers from causing trouble in the immediate area of the garden, gang and drug problems still exist in other areas of that neighborhood.In police records provided to the item by Puleo, over 100 calls to the area near the Ingalls School and near by side streets exist since 2004, however none of those calls reference the garden directly, suggesting that police are facing problems in an area much larger than one acre.- Item Reporter Robin Kaminski contributed to this report.