Greetings, I'm hoping that some of you can help me and the small, urban Land Trust that I'm working with.
About a half-dozen community gardens in Brooklyn, NY are in the midst of creating an independent Land Trust. The properties are currently owned by the Trust for Public Land (TPL). We are well on our way to creating a free-standing local Land Trust. Once our new entity - Brooklyn Alliance of Neighborhood Gardens (BANG) has all our legal and administrative ducks in a row, we expect to obtain the actual deeds to the properties from TPL. At this point, we're well along on getting BANG's 501c3 status, Bylaws, etc. finalized. What we are also doing, now, is creating the language that will become a License Agreement between our member garden groups and BANG. And here's where I would really appreciate your help and suggestions. BANG's philosophy is to be as light-handed and nimble as possible, as far as administration goes, when it comes to its relationship with its member gardens. Since we are a small group of gardens, each garden will have one of its members on BANG's Board of Directors. This will insure that each garden is represented in any decisions that effect the whole organization, without making the organization unwieldy. We intend for the gardens to be the primary managers of their own, culturally unique spaces and that BANG will offer the benefit of being able to provide them liability insurance and other services, when and where that makes financial and logistical sense. But, legally, realistically and pragmatically, BANG will be the deed-holder of those properties, with all the legal and liability responsibilities that entails. Soooooooo, as we draft our License Agreement, we are trying to create a document that includes the minimum of interference by BANG in each garden's daily management and style, while outlining a clear understanding of the legal responsibilities that BANG has as the property owner and, likewise, the responsibility and accountability that each garden group, as stewards of their site, has to BANG. It's a fine line to walk and we are trying to avoid ambiguous, convoluted and burdensome language, so that everyone has a clear understanding of what each entity's responsibilities and authority is towards eachother. That bring me to this shout out to you all. I am assembling as many samples of License or "Partnership" Agreements as possible from groups that have this kind of arrangement between a deed-holding entity - City, Non-profit, Land Trust that holds the deeds to several properties, etc. - and a group of gardens or open spaces that it owns. I'm hoping we can "cut and paste" and tailor some good ideas and best practices from your documents to help shape our own. I'd really appreciate any copies of License Agreements, or other similar documents that you think might help us put together a clear and practical working document for our new Land Trust. Believe me, your practical, hands-on experience will be very greatly appreciated. If you prefer, you can contact me off-list at: bklyn.nighth...@gmail.com or call me anytime, if you'd like to talk about our new venture: 718-219-7064 Thanks soooo much for any guidance and samples of your documents, folks. Go, BANG! :-D All best wishes, Jessica Katz BANG Brooklyn, NY -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20111001/2f4d9141/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: community_garden@list.communitygarden.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
