Green bounty, red ink.

Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-Guard

The University of Oregon students showed up at the Churchill Community Garden this week mostly clueless but eager to lend a hand.

Few of the 20 business graduate students could recognize a ripe tomatillo, a lemon cucumber or a spinach start. But their first day of school orientation included a community-building exercise that put them in the heart of one of FOOD for Lane County's gardens.

With some expert instruction from the garden manager, they were hauling mulch, digging up grass and piling tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers and peppers into boxes destined for Lane County's hungry residents.

The Churchill plot, like the other two operated by the food bank, is brimming with produce this time of year.

But the thriving gardens are themselves living on borrowed time, potential victims of FOOD for Lane County's financial woes.

The second-largest food bank in the state has run into red ink for two years. In 2002, the agency borrowed $238,000 to cover operating expenses. Steep cuts to payroll and programs appear to have warded off a similar fate this year.

The gardens have become a focal point in the debate over cost-cutting strategies among the food bank's board members:

Should FOOD for Lane County regroup and concentrate its staff time and money on food distribution, period?

That would mean dropping popular but costly programs such as the gardens or the agency's nutrition classes that don't get food directly to needy people.

The food bank has decided to fund the gardens just through December, said Cynthia Pappas, president of the food bank's board of directors.

"In an ideal world that is not what we want to see happen," Pappas said. "But we have to balance the needs in the community with the financial resources we have."

Last year, 76,000 county residents - 30,000 of them children - received emergency food boxes. All told, just under 6 million pounds of food went out to needy people.

The gardens don't come cheap. If the food bank were to fund them fully this year, it would cost $167,000. Almost 70 percent of the total would cover wages and benefits, with the rest going toward administrative expenses, equipment, maintenance and supplies.

Last year, the gardens provided 50,000 pounds of fresh produce. That comes out to about $3.34 per pound, a huge cost considering that most of the food the agency distributes through its network of pantries, kitchens and other sites comes for free from donors and the federal government.

Hard to quantify benefits

But the per-pound cost of the garden food obscures the real value of the gardens, say the staff members who work there.

At the Youth Farm in Springfield, for example, at-risk teens get paid during the summer to work in the gardens and oversee a small food stand. They gain skills and self-esteem in the process of helping feed those less fortunate, said Jen Anonia, the garden's manager.

At the GrassRoots Garden on Coburg Road, low-income volunteers rub shoulders with master gardeners and learn valuable skills that help them develop self-sufficiency, which in turn can keep them from relying on emergency food boxes, Anonia said.

The gardens also attract thousands of volunteers who might not otherwise know about the food bank and its work to feed the hungry in Lane County, she said.

But such benefits are hard to quantify and the costs are difficult to justify for an agency focused on curbing expenses, Pappas said.

The food bank has struggled to live within its means since 2000, the year after it moved into its new offices and warehouse on Bailey Hill Road. While a capital campaign raised $2.5 million for the new building, the project logged overruns.

The agency took out a $500,000 mortgage to cover additional costs, mostly for equipment and furnishings.

With a bigger warehouse, the food bank had the space to collect and distribute significantly more food, and donors stepped up to the challenge of providing it.

In 1998-99, the agency took in 3.25 million pounds of food. By 2000-2001, that amount jumped to 5 million. Yet the federal and state dollars that the agency receives for emergency food distribution didn't increase, interim Executive Director Jessica Chanay said.

Borrowing covered the cost of moving additional food from the warehouse to area pantries, she said.

But former board member Bob Peters, who served as treasurer last year, said personnel costs grew too fast during that period and also contributed to the growing debt.

Audited records show that from 1998 until 2002, personnel costs grew by 78 percent from $714,279 to $1,270,798.

By the end of 2002, the agency's debt had reached $824,000, almost half of its annual budget.

Last January, faced with a potential third consecutive year of red ink, the food bank cut staff salaries by 5 percent, reduced and then eliminated retirement contributions, and increased the health care costs for employees. Some employees took days off without pay, and the agency also opted not to fill some jobs when people left.

While the food bank's annual audit won't be completed for another month, Chanay believes that the agency finished the 2002-2003 fiscal year within budget.

Painful decision

When the board began meeting to consider a budget for the current fiscal year, agency programs that didn't directly contribute to the food bank's mission of providing emergency food were on the chopping block.

Healthy Futures, a $75,000 program providing nutrition and budgeting classes to low-income families, was cut. But cutting the gardens outright was just too painful, Pappas said.

The issue has generated plenty of debate, not just on the board but among employees and community members, Chanay said.

The nation's food banks are expanding their mission to include food self-sufficiency programs that will reduce reliance on the emergency system, she said. Nutrition and budgeting classes and gardening programs fit within that model, she said.

About half of the state's food banks have gardens, an Oregon Food Bank spokeswoman said.

Measuring their success, however, is difficult to do. FOOD for Lane County doesn't track the number of low-income volunteers who come to the gardens or whether they use the skills they develop to continue gardening, Anonia said.

Pappas said the food bank hopes that delaying a decision until December to shut down the gardens will allow donors and private foundations to pick up the cost. And there have been some fund-raising successes.

A Sept. 6 garden tour brought in $1,100. An adopt-a-bed program has generated $500. And John Weakland of Springfield, a restaurant manager, is so impressed with the Youth Farm that he's planned a silent auction and benefit dinner in October.

A grant brought in another $4,000, and the food bank still plans a $65,000 subsidy, bringing the total on hand to $86,825. But that's still a far cry from the $167,000 it will take to keep the program going through June 2004.

The board also is looking at other ways to make the gardens self-sustaining, Pappas said. Other nonprofit gardens survive by selling a portion of their produce, either through farm stands or subscriptions, or classes and special events, she said. The board will discuss some of those options at its October meeting.

Fund raising stepped up

The board also faces the challenges of guiding the agency back on course after a summer of turmoil that saw an investigation into the financial decisions of former Executive Director Caroline Frengle, who was fired in August.

That decision split the board, and six of its 16 members quit. The board has mounted a search for a new director and is actively seeking new members, Pappas said. She expects to have a full complement of board members by the end of the year and a new director by March, she said.

The public scrutiny doesn't appear to have hurt the agency financially, Pappas said.

Unsolicited donations from the beginning of its fiscal year in July through Sept. 15 totaled $23,000, almost triple the amount for the same time last year, agency figures indicate.

Donations through the grocery store SCAN program are up by $7,000 over the same period last year. And a rare summer solicitation - the first of its kind - brought in $8,000.

But it's still too soon to tell how the agency will fare this fiscal year, with an ambitious fund-raising goal set at $1.1 million - about half its budget. Contributions total $73,000 so far.

The board hopes the diversity of its funding sources will provide the agency with the financial stability it needs.

"We're an organization that has a very highly fluctuating cash flow," Pappas said. "We're trying very hard to stabilize that cash flow so that borrowing doesn't have to occur."

FOOD BANK GARDENS

GrassRoots Garden, 2.5 acres off Coburg Road: 12 years old, a partnership among the food bank, Lane County Master Gardeners and St. Thomas Episcopal Church, which owns the land. Attracted 3,205 volunteers last year. Will produce about 25,000 pounds of food this season.

Youth Farm, 3 acres off Game Farm Road: 6-year-old partnership with Springfield School District, which owns the land. Hires at-risk youths to work at the garden. Produce goes to low-income youths and the food bank, with some food sold at a discount to area neighbors. Attracted 1,123 volunteers last year. Will produce about 25,000 pounds of food this season.

Churchill Community Garden, 1 acre just south of Churchill High School: 3-year-old partnership among the food bank, Churchill High School, Kennedy Middle School and area neighbors on Eugene School District-owned land. Attracted 752 volunteers last year. Will produce between 6,000 and 7,000 pounds of food this season.

COST OF FOOD BANK

Food distribution: $1,009,485 for emergency food to pantries, low-income housing, homeless shelters and other agencies

Food Rescue Express: $310,510 to collect prepared foods from restaurants and grocers, repackage and distribute it

Summer lunch program: $240,000 to serve meals to school-age low-income children when school is out

Family dinner program: $169,740 to feed hungry low-income people in Springfield and Eugene

Gardens: $167,458

COST OF GARDENS

Wages and benefits: $95,064 for three garden coordinators

Administration: $39,027 for such things as office supplies, utilities, phone, insurance, training, conferences, travel, insurance, consultants.

Youth Farm pay: $21,900 for teen-agers who work during the summer

Garden supplies: $7,430 for such things as tools, seeds, planting trays, irrigation supplies, rain gear, gloves

Vehicles: $4,037, including equipment, maintenance

CAPTION(S):

Patrick Carr harvests beans at the Churchill Community Garden with fellow graduate students, who lent a hand as part of an orientation program. More than 750 volunteers brought in thousands of pounds of produce last year, but the program is in jeopardy due to budget cuts.