Elementary schoolchildren sing throughout the annual Saratoga Blossom Competition within the metropolis’s Heritage Orchard on this 2014 file photograph. The Saratoga Metropolis Council narrowly voted to replace the orchard’s upkeep contract to require the contractor to attend the Blossom Competition and different neighborhood occasions. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Space Information Group)
Saratoga Metropolis Council narrowly authorised tips Feb. 9 for the Heritage Orchard’s upkeep contract, regardless of considerations from the council and the general public concerning the well being of the orchard and rivalry that the up to date tips are too restrictive.
The town is ready to begin accepting functions in March for Requests for Proposals (RFP) to run the orchard. Council voted 3-2 to approve updates to the RFP to incorporate sustainable fruit harvesting necessities and neighborhood engagement initiatives. Vice Mayor Kookie Fitzsimmons and Councilmember Rishi Kumar voting towards the updates.
Fitzsimmons mentioned the earlier 12 months’s RFP must be adopted as an alternative of the brand new plan, which she mentioned is simply too restrictive and threatens the well being of the orchard.
“If you wish to see a very magnificent, majestic heritage orchard, it's important to go to Sunnyvale’s orchard. You will notice straight away how frail, fragile, weak our orchard is at this second,” Fitzsimmons mentioned. “So, I’m so dissatisfied. It was the suitable reply for me to go to final 12 months’s RFP, and I'll go away it at that as a result of I do know I’m within the minority.”
Employees mentioned the modifications have been proposed to replicate the just lately up to date Heritage Orchard Grasp Plan and the neighborhood harvest held final summer season, when hundreds of residents got here out to select fruit on the orchard.
Beneath the brand new RFP, the contractor is chargeable for yearly harvesting fruit and distributing it to the general public by means of harvest occasions and native meals banks. It additionally requires the contractor to take part in neighborhood actions just like the annual Blossom Competition, Arbor Day celebration and month-to-month Heritage Fee conferences.
“The neighborhood engagement–the households that got here final summer season–was such an enormous success, approach past my creativeness, and I want to see that proceed,” Mayor Tina Walia mentioned. “The truth that the harvesting of the fruit was finished by members of the neighborhood in addition to volunteers from the meals banks…I feel that's simply phenomenal.”
The town’s present contract with Orchard Keepers is ready to run out in Could. Orchard Keepers was awarded a one-year contract in each 2020 and 2021. Earlier than that, Novakovich Orchards maintained the Heritage Orchard.
Former Saratoga resident Neal Casteel, who has advocated for Novakovich Orchards to regain the administration contract for the Heritage Orchard, raised considerations finally week’s council assembly concerning the impartiality of the RFP.
“The RFP identifies necessities that I imagine are excessively restrictive and would stop another potential orchardists from curiosity within the care of the orchard,” Casteel mentioned. “It exhibits a bias towards the prevailing contractor by setting out staffing necessities…that might stop curiosity in bidding.”
Casteel mentioned 408 timber are lacking from the orchard, and that no new timber had been planted for the previous two years.
Saratoga spokesperson Lauren Pettipiece mentioned some timber have been misplaced over a number of years as a result of oak root fungus, and town “rigorously thought-about” how they'd substitute the misplaced timber. Council authorised a Capital Enchancment Plan challenge to switch the timber later this 12 months.
The Heritage Orchard was designated as a metropolis park in 1984 to acknowledge the city’s agricultural heritage. It was designated a heritage landmark by town in 1988, and it's now one of many few remaining orchards within the Bay Space, in accordance with town’s web site .
In 2020, town council adopted the Heritage Orchard Grasp Plan developed by the Heritage Preservation Fee.