Author Archives: Fairpark Community

Utahns Against Hunger: Utah Summer Food Program

Summer is on the way and that means the start of the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). The SFSP works to fill the nutrition gap between school years for low-income students who rely on free and reduced price breakfast and lunch programs. The summer food program begins after the school year ends, usually the beginning of June. Summer food sites in Utah are sponsored either by a school district’s food service program, the Utah Food Bank, or Salt Lake Head Start and they serve breakfast, lunch, and supper in parks and schools across the state. This is program is free to all kids 18 years and younger and there is no paperwork or registration required.

For the second year in a row, Utahns Against Hunger is running a literacy program on the west side of Salt Lake City. Kids who attend the lunch program at Jordan Park on Tuesdays, Sherwood Park on Wednesdays, and Northwest Central Park on Thursdays will receive a free book all summer long!

Click on the photo for the Summer Food Service Program flyer. Our hope is that you are able to print this summer food flyer and share it with your network and neighbors. If possible, please display the summer food flyer today and leave till the end of July.

For a full list of summer food sites in your area please visit our web page where there are printable flyers and a searchable map.See a list of Salt Lake School District sites here (including Backman Elementary, Jackson Elementary, Rose Park Elementary and West High). Parks are also listed.

In addition, you can call Utahns Against Hunger at 800-453-3663 for assistance locating a site. You can also text FOOD to 877877 to find a location. All of this information is available on the flyer as well.

Please call if you have any questions.

Marti Woolford, Nutrition Initiatives Director

Utahns Against Hunger

801 328-2561 (office)

800 453-3663 (toll free)

www.uah.org

To increase access to food through advocacy, outreach, and education

Stellar Success for 1st Annual Plant Sale!

Be proud Fairpark Community residents! The 1st Annual Fairpark Community Plant Sale was a big success. We achieved our aim of sending over 4000 healthy vegetable plants home to happy gardens both within our neighborhood and beyond.

After growing and selling the 28 varieties of Heirloom tomatoes, 16 kinds of Peppers, 3 Eggplant, and herbs we recovered the costs for growing the plants and we were also able to give away hundreds of packages of FREE Seeds, as well as pots, soil and seeds for the younger ones to take home and watch grow. Everyone had a really fun time, especially those that spent the whole day volunteering for the big event. From the end of February until May 14 over 400 volunteer hours into the growing and operating the event.

This event would not have been so wonderful without the dedicated hard work of volunteers. No amount of gratitude is sufficient to express how thankful we all are that these volunteers were able to give so much of their time.

We also couldn’t have done it without a few other pieces of unusually good luck. Two of these lucky breaks stand out. First to happen was getting the majority of the Greenhouse building materials donated. But by far the most important lucky break was being allowed to put the Greenhouse right at the wonderful Vegan Vietnamese restaurant, All Chay. We can’t heap enough praise on the kind and generous owners of that restaurant. Not only did they allow us to assemble the Greenhouse right against their front window, but they provided many hours of volunteer help with the project, from its assembly, to tending the plants and making sure the windows were always clean for the plants and for patrons to view the plants from the outside.

Fairpark also got some media coverage out of this project: KRCL, KUER and Salt Lake City Television.

For you patrons that supported our community by getting plants and planting them in our garden, please send photos of your garden and/or any gardening activities to dirt2table@gmail.com or text to 801-403-0121. Please add your general location (e.g., Fairpark) and your first name and any comment you’d like to add. We want to see your gardens and post them to our social media!

We are already planning for next year. Stay tuned for a re-branding and details about the 2017 event.

Garden on!

West Side Spotlight: Larry Mullenax and Jeff Kooring

This month, we met with Larry Mullenax and Jeff Kooring of the Utah State Fairpark for our West Side Spotlight! Larry is the interim Executive Director and Jeff is the Director of Sales and Marketing for the Utah State Fair Corporation. As we have previously reported, this was a very successful legislative session for the Fairpark. With the help of the Fairpark Community Council and other west side leaders, legislation was passed that effectively resolved the lease issue, made changes to the governing structure and appropriated funding for deferred maintenance. One positive piece of the legislation is that the new Board overseeing the Fairpark will include a member who lives in the neighborhood who will represent the viewpoint of the community. The City and State have shown serious commitment to keeping the Utah State Fairpark where it is for years to come.

“This summer, we are looking forward to lots of fun events at the Fairpark, in addition to the Fair in September (9/8-18),” said Mullenax. Kooring added, “We’ve got great events coming like the Artists Blacksmiths Association of North America biennial conference which will have thousands of international metal artists, educational events and markets (7/13-16). The Vans Warped Tour (7/30) is coming back and will bring thousands of concert goers. The Utah Beer Festival (8/27) will move from Washington Square to the Fairpark this year and the proceeds will benefit the Utah Humane Society.”
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Get your Garden on with Fairpark Community’s First Annual Plant Sale!

Got Garden?

We have just what you need to fill it up!

After months of hard work by volunteers, the Fairpark Community Council’s First Annual Plant Sale is almost here! Almost 4,000 veggies and herb plants are being cared for by dedicated volunteers. The seedlings are growing like wild and will be sure to enhance any garden in our neighborhood with culinary delights.

Read more here (https://fairparkcommunity.org/?p=814) about how to pre-order your plants and pick them up as early as the end of April, and view full catalogs of the availalbe varieties of vegetables and herbs, as well as a full color listing of the vegetable seeds that will be given away at the May 14 event.

How did this all start?

The FCC Board decided to take advantage of the Salt Lake City annual Signature Event Fund application in fall of 2015. The FCC Board decided that a fun event would be a plant sale and education event. The scope of events that happened after that was amazing!

A donation of a structure that looks very much like a bus shelter was timely. Volunteers dismantled the structure over a weekend in late February and the following weekend rebuilt it at All Chay restaurant (1264 W 500 N), the proprietors of which graciously donated space for the project. The next 6 weeks were busy with fine tuning the structure with materials to make it a functioning greenhouse, planting seeds, separating seedlings, watering the plants and generating interest in our community for the project. Tom King, project lead, appeared on KRCL Radio’s Punk Rock Farmer show on April 15 to discuss and promote the project.

The next few weeks will be spent continuing the care of the plants, advertising and promoting the event, taking pre-orders with the culminating plant sale event at Northwest Community Center, Saturday, May 14 at 10am.

As a special incentive to get people to attend the May 14 event, we will be offering free seeds for lettuce, carrots, zucchini, cucumbers and more! There will fun be activities for kids of all ages.

View the full color listing of the vegetable seeds that will be given away here.

Left over plants from the May 14 event will be taken to the Get Into the River Festival from 5-7pm, at the Fairpark Amphitheater, 155 North 1000 West.

We are very excited about this community building/enhancing project. We hope residents will become more interested in growing their own food, sharing their stories about gardening, sharing samples of their edibles, and develop sustainable habits that will improve health and lifestyles for years to come.

Garden on dude!

Affordable Housing Development at 750 W. South Temple

A representative of the Vecino Group will attend the next community council
meeting (April 28, 6:30, Northwest Community Center, 1255 Clark Ave) to talk about their project at 750 W. South Temple (just outside our border in Poplar Grove) and answer questions of those in attendance may have. This visit is for informational purposes only as this development has passed the form based
zoning for the City and the City Council voted 4-3 to allow Salt Lake County Housing
Authority to build this structure in Salt Lake City.

The project planned is called Bodhi and will be a five-story building
including 80 units of one and two-bedroom apartments. 60 of the 80 units will be
held for those making 50% or less of the Area Median Income (AMI). 50% of the
area median income for Salt Lake County is $36,100 for a family of 4. Of those 60
units, there will be 5 set aside for the chronically homeless, 9 units for the severely
and persistently mentally ill, and 9 units for those with a long-term mobility
disability. There will be full-time onsite services provided by the Salt Lake
Community Action Program.

This $12 million development is a partnership between the Vecino Group
and the Salt Lake County Housing Authority, and is being funded by Federal Low
Income Housing Tax Credits and $1 million from the Olene Walker Housing Trust
The Fairpark Community Council Executive Committee has been meeting
with stakeholders ever since we first heard about this development. Though we
welcome the higher densities that the Transit Station Area zoning provides along
the TRAX line, we are worried by the concentration of affordable units in this
development and along the TRAX corridor, and will continue to work with our city
council members to ensure that further developments along North Temple do not
have such a high proportion of affordable units.

Zoning Terms Primer

There is a lot of discussion about zoning, but what does it all mean?

Housing terms are often referred to in our discussions and presentations about housing: Affordable housing, Subsidized housing and Market rate housing. Here you can learn about things such as what “cost burdened” means, the percentage of Salt Lake residents who are cost burdened, how vouchers work, and what market value is.

Affordable housing: Families who pay more than 30 percent of their incomes for housing are considered cost burdened and may have difficulty affording necessities such as food, clothing, transportation and medical care. An estimated 12 million renter and homeowner households now pay more than 50 percent of their annual incomes for housing. A family with one full-time worker earning the minimum wage cannot afford local fair-market rent for a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the US. In Salt Lake City, 50% of our renters are cost burdened and 25% of our renters are severely cost burdened (meaning they pay more than 50% of their income on rent).

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West Side Spotlight: State Representative Sandra Hollins

Representative Sandra Hollins, D-District 23

Fairpark Gazette: Thank you so much for sitting down to visit with The Gazette! What would you like to tell the residents of Fairpark?

Rep. Sandra Hollins: First, thank you for having me! Well, let’s start by talking about voting. I just want west side residents to know that this is a very important election and I want them to come out and vote because their vote equates to their voice. I saw it in the mayor’s election and I want to make sure they show up for this election as well. I was so proud during our caucus night. I was very proud to see the lines and the amount of people who came out for caucus night, and so I want make sure those same people come out to vote. I want to make sure that those who aren’t registered to vote get registered and that their voices are heard. We could really turn this state people! There are so many democrats and if you count all the democrats who think their voices don’t matter, and they get together, you find it DOES matter. When I’m out campaigning, I hear of so many people who say, “I don’t vote because I don’t think it will make a difference, and it does make a difference. It makes a HUGE difference!” One of my concerns is the number of young people who have no interest in voting, but I noticed in the last caucus night the number of young people who are excited about this presidential race and who are out and interested in politics, which gets me very excited about politics. I met a number of young people who have never voted before who said this was their first time participating in the political process. I met a young man who was a refugee and he got his citizenship last year. That this was his first time to vote. And not only did he register to vote, but he became a delegate! He came and sat by me and we talked and talked. He had a lot questions about the process and what needs to be done, and who’s running… He was just so curious. He just jumped in with both feet! I loved that.

FG: We just made it through the legislative session. We didn’t have a lot of wins, but one of the things we were happy about was the Fairpark Bill coming out.

Visit Representative Hollins Legislative website here.

Continue reading →

Start Your Garden Catalog!

The long awaited Dirt2Table Start Your Garden Plant Sale Catalog is finally here! View the catalog and follow instructions for accessing the pre-order form.

Plants are $1 each, or $5 for a six pack or $25 for 6-six packs. Mix and match is ok!
(all proceeds will be used to enhance the next Annual Fairpark Community Plant Sale).
Fill out your pre-order form and submit it via any of these methods:

at the All Chay Restaurant, 1264 West 500 North
Scan and email to
dirt2tableslc@gmail.com
Text photo of order form to
8015021991

Order pick ups will be arranged using the contact info you provide on the order form. We anticipate starting to have orders picked up on May 6 th or 7th
in advance of the May 14 th event in the park.

For status on your order you can call Tom at 801-502-1991.

*** Attention! Quantities are limited! All orders will be filled on a first come first serve basis. Please get your order form to one of our partners as soon as possible to try to ensure your order can be complete. Payment will be at time of pickup, in case substitutions or subtractions apply***

To view the full catalog, click garden catalog.

To print an order form, click plant order form.

To print a flyer, click flyer.

New! (April 19, 2016): Seed Giveaway Listing for anyone who attends the event on May 14 – even if you have pre-ordered and picked up your order! Click here for the listing.

Click the thumbnail images below to view one catalog page at a time.

Pages 1 and 2

Pages 3 and 4

Seed Giveaway Listing image

Vote for your favorite Fairpark Community Logo!

April 5, 2016: Voting is now closed.

(Click “read post” and then scroll down to view the images)

Pedal in the City: Take the Bicycle Safety Survey

The Salt Lake County Planning and Transportation Office of Regional Development is conducting a survey on improving bicycle safety through April 11. Through an interactive map participants can provide input about biking routes and concerns. Take the survey!

What would it take to get you bicycling in Salt Lake County?

What type of bicycling infrastructure should the county invest in?

TAKE THE SURVEY below and use our interactive mapping tool to add points, lines, & comments to let us know where you bike, where barriers exist, and where you might bike if conditions were better.http://wikimapping.com/wikimap/Salt-Lake-County-Bikes.html

Participa en la encuesta en español:

Sus comentarios nos ayudarán a mejor enfocar nuestros esfuerzos para mejorar el ciclismo a lo largo del valle de Salt Lake, y en agradecimiento por su tiempo, usted será elegible para recibir un pase UTA de $5 (sólo para los primeros 750 encuestados). Esta encuesta le llevará aproximadamente entre 8 y 10 minutos.

Para mayor información, visite www.slco.org/bikes