Labor Scam @ Juilliard Park
Community Garden
I am writing about an incident that occurred earlier this year. I had
hoped it would resolve itself as a win-win situation, but it has not.
This
incident involved the "A Team" - Andrea Pellicani & Alan Bartl -
who sometimes post using the name "Sustainable Santa Rosa".
I am writing to report labor fraud.
In
my opinion, labor fraud has been practiced by Andrea Pellicani &
Alan Bartl, 2 of the people associated with the Juilliard Park
community garden.
In February 2009, Andrea used a local website, WaccoBB.org, to announce
a "work party."
Thinking
that this would allow me to obtain a garden plot, I decided to attend,
and showed up a little after 10 AM. I worked from 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM
to help install a fence around their garden area.
Before I
started working, I made it very clear to Alan and Andrea that I was
there because I wanted a garden plot. With that understanding, I
proceeded to join them for a community garden work party. When we sat
down and talked afterwards, I re-iterated my desire to obtain a garden
plot.
Andrea and I even worked together for about an hour, and
most of what we talked about was gardening. Altogether about 7 people
showed up to work.
Afterwards, I was surprised to hear nothing
from either Andrea or Alan. I emailed Andrea after a few weeks, in
February, and heard nothing back. I emailed her again in March, and she
finally wrote me back.
At that time she informed me that there were no garden plots available.
To use quotes from the financial press, used to describe the fraud run
by people like Madoff and Stanford -
"simple fraud - promising things that the people doing the promising
knew they couldn't possibly make good on"
"Contract
law calls that fraud - intentionally inducing someone into an agreement
that you have no intention or ability to perform on."
In my opinion, that is exactly what Alan & Andrea did.
They
held out the promise of a garden plot. The effect was to persuade
people to give their time & labor. Then, a month later, in an
email, Andrea told me that there were actually no garden plots
available.
In my opinion, Alan and Andrea are using Santa Rosa
City Property to scam their neighbors into donating time to their own
pet project or projects.
