After some 25 years as an independent, volunteer organization, the Beautification Committee is moving under the city’s oversight as an ad hoc subcommittee of the city Park and Tree Committee.
Patti Holk, who has led the approximately 25-member group since founder Alice Grovom stepped down, said group members have agreed to the arrangement on a trial basis.
“We’ll try it for a year,” she said. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to work together freely, openly.”
The Beautification Committee was founded in the late 1990s by then-City Manager Craig Martin and Alice Grovom, with Phyllis Osborne Smith, to focus on making the median on Main Street attractive.
The median strip, which dates back to the 1970s, was kind of an “on-again, off-again” affair, Martin told The New Era in 2009. For years, Sweet Home Ranger District personnel performed the upkeep on the median, but by 1997 the U.S. Forest Service staff in Sweet Home was being scaled back and the median wasn’t getting as much attention.
“We had a meeting with the stakeholders, people who had volunteered in the past,” Martin recalled. “The conversation was about whether we should keep it or tear it out. Alice was at that meeting, and she spoke up. She thought she could organize people to help backfill the lack of volunteers we had. That was the birth of the Sweet Home Beautification Effort.”
Grovom, who died last year after leading the group for a quarter-century, said she became interested in gardening in 1995, when she decided to retire from her career as an accountant. She began the median project with a $3,000 grant from the Sweet Home Foundation, the charitable arm of the Sweet Home Economic Development Group, which she matched within a week.
Over the years, Beautification Committee projects were funded by the city, SHEDG, private donors – including Grovom herself, and the Arts and Crafts Fair hosted by committee members during the Oregon Jamboree.
Whenever the Beautification Committee needed more funding, Grovom was “out beating the pavement,” Holk said. “She would be talking to the city council, and they all knew that you’ve got to be careful when she came around because she was after something, and you couldn’t say no.”
According to City Manager Kelcey Young, city leaders raised concerns earlier this year about how the group was funded, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic. She said city officials discovered that some members were being paid for their landscaping efforts while others worked as volunteers.
“That’s not the cleanest way to do things,” Young said.
She said that the city had budgeted about $15,000 out of the Public Works budget for median upkeep, which city officials understood was going toward flowers, supplies and an appreciation lunch.
Holk acknowledged that some people had been paid “a good amount of money” to do “weeding and trimming, work that volunteers could not do.”
She said that median beautification efforts were by volunteers but that other work had been paid.
Initially, Holk said, volunteers were reluctant to become an arm of the city, but after a series of meetings with Young, they decided to move forward with the plan.
Holk said the city Public Works Department has been “extremely supportive,” making sure the median watering systems were working and providing cones to block off Main Street’s inner lanes while volunteers worked on the median on alternate Tuesday mornings during the summers.
She said Parks and Tree Commission member Lena Tucker, who recently retired from the Oregon Department of Forestry, helped with this year’s planting early in May.
“The city always helps us put out the plants,” Holk said. “We’ve always had absolutely incredible support.”
While the median strip has been the primary focus over the years, Beautification members have also planted and maintained the entry kiosk on Highway 228 at the Fern Ridge intersection, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the 3000 block of Main Street, and Clover Park at Main and Osage.
Young said safety’s been another of the city’s concerns, when the inner lanes of Main Street are blocked off through most of the downtown area. However, vehicles pass in relatively close proximity, sometimes, to workers. One option she’s suggested has been to install plants that don’t need as frequent care as those currently in the median.
She said Beautification members have been “receptive” to that concern, and “we’re still going to be discussing it. That’s a conversation we need to have.”