Fifteen years ago, North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco decided that a good way to increase health awareness and beautify the town would be for the residents to participate in an annual vegetable and flower give-away at Town Hall.
“It was small back then,” Sacco recalled. “We gave out a few hundred plants inside Town Hall. It all started as a campaign to help people eat healthier foods. It wasn’t a big deal then.”
However, it’s not small anymore – it has become a highly anticipated event in the town. There are months of preparation, thousands of order forms to fill out and the organizing of a grass roots volunteer effort to help purchase and distribute the plants. There is also a strategy for purchasing the right variety of greenery and flowers at the right time.
The event once featured a few hundred plants but current shows bring 6,900 flats of plants that hold 48 plants each. “You do the math,” said Jimmy Nehira, the organizer of the event, who works for the township’s Municipal Utilities Authority in the recycling department.
The program, which costs an approximate $50,000, is funded by Sacco and the North Bergen Democratic Organization and individual donations. The funding does not come out of the township’s annual budget. Sacco was on hand, along with Parks and Recreation Commissioner Peter Perez, to see the program begin with the delivery of the first plants last Monday. Some 30 municipal employees volunteered their efforts in the plant distribution, loading up the plants on trucks and other vehicles and transporting them to residents, free of charge. “It’s a great way to beautify the town with the flowers and the neighborhood gardens,” Sacco said. “It also encourages residents to eat healthier. But on a larger sense, it gives a sense of community to everyone. Everyone is out here, working together, volunteering their time. The committeemen and women get to talk to the residents this way, talk about their concerns and needs. It really serves a lot of purposes.”
Nehira realizes that there is much preparation involved.
“You have to be pretty organized to distribute the volume of plants that we do,” Nehira said. “It’s not an easy task. But it goes a long way in improving North Bergen’s appearance and I know that is Mayor Sacco’s goal. I think it’s impressive that he’s willing to spend a lot of his own money and the money he raised for the project.” Sacco was fortunate to get someone of Nehira’s background to organize the efforts. Nehira’s family owned a nursery in California, so it was only natural that he became the head honcho in the plant distribution.
“Jimmy’s our resident expert,” Sacco said. “He knows what are quality plants and where to get them. He has the whole thing broken down and makes it easy.”
Some of the township’s biggest organizations came down to collect their plants. United Cerebral Palsy sent a representative, Dominick Borthwick, with a passenger van that was filled with the plants. Roslyn Belkin of Westview Towers also brought several flats of plants back to the senior citizens of her housing complex.
“It will be crazy like this for a couple of days,” Nehira said. “We do what we can. If we run out of something, we try to re-order. We never turn anyone away. We don’t always get everybody on the first day, so it takes some time.”
“The people are always happy to get their plants,” Nehira said. “I think it’s a great thing for the town.”
“Generally, people feel good about the program,” Sacco said. “We hear later on that the vegetables that the residents grew turned out to be so good and the flowers were so beautiful. I think it goes a long way to making everyone feel good and that’s the most important thing.”