Sorting out the rumors about The Greenhouse Project

Recently, an article was posted to Carson Now by University of Nevada Cooperative Extension promoting a spring plant sale fundraiser for The Greenhouse Project, located behind Carson High School.

Although the article itself seemed very non-controversial, the comments posted to it were anything but.

Lisa Helget, who in 2014 unsuccessfully ran for Carson City Supervisor against The Greenhouse Project founder Karen Abowd, left a comment accusing Abowd of using this nonprofit entity to benefit her restaurant, Café at Adele's, which she co-owns with her husband Charlie Abowd.

Here is the comment from Helget:

How interesting this article never mentions that this is "owned" by Supervisor Karen Abowd who uses this as her personal veggie selling business that has also supplied its crops to her own restaurant. This artcle would have us believe that this business is managed by the Nevada Cooperative Extension when that is NOT the case. It is also interesting that Supervisor Abowd has not disclosed she is a current elected official on this "non profit's" tax returns. Or that she never bothered to follow the rules of other businesses in Carson City by getting a business license to operate her "hobby garden" that's funded, in part, with tax payer funds that she votes consistently to waste on her other personal visions. The mission statement of this business endeavor is not even mentioned in this article! This is NOT a "community garden" nor should be promoted as one. It is a business with non profit status run by Supervisor Abowd and her business owning friends she votes to benefit as a Carson City Supervisor. Let's call it what it is, shall we? And to Mrs. Abowd's lawyer buddy, save a tree and don't bother sending legal nastygrams in her defense when all anybody has to do is read about this to determine this article is simply a "feel good" piece of misinformation.

She followed this comment with several others, making even more accusations about the Abowds and The Greenhouse Project's operations.

While we welcome critical comments on stories, this one veered into touchy legal terrain. It makes a direct accusation that could be considered criminal conduct. However, there was very little evidence presented to verify this claim. As such, this comment could be considered libelous, which could result in a lawsuit against her and this website.

Note that Helget doesn't question IF Karen Abowd MAY be doing something wrong. She presents it as if it were a proven fact, which in the absence of evidence, is just begging for a libel suit.

Now, I could have just blocked the comment due to the potential legal implications and left it at that. But this is a rumor that Helget and her friends have been pushing for years, and it doesn't seem to want to go away. So either there is some actual fire to go along with the smoke, or this is simply the case of a losing candidate waging a personal vendetta disguised as political discourse.

So I decided to look into this to see if we could settle this once and for all. It's a long and complicated story, but I think it needs to be told.

I asked Helget for any information she had to back up these charges.

She claimed that Adele's "buys" greens from the outside planting beds, but offered no evidence of such transactions. I asked Karen Abowd and Greenhouse manager Corey King about this, and both denied these transactions take place. King said the only produce that goes to Adele's is one item each year that is used for their annual Harvest Dinner fundraiser benefitting The Greenhouse Project. Helget offered no evidence to support this charge.

A few years ago, there was an allegation similar to this. It started with a post to Adele's Facebook page promoting a special menu item using oyster mushrooms from The Greenhouse Project. This was quickly seized upon by political opponents of the Abowds that they were taking produce to use in their restaurant.

I investigated this charge at the time, and found that Adele's purchased 10 pounds of oyster mushrooms for $180 from the greenhouse. The mushrooms were the result of an experiment by one of the volunteers to see if they could grow them, with spawn donated by Sylvan Inc. of Dayton, the world's leading producer of mushroom spawn.

The experiment was a success, but oyster mushrooms aren't a very popular item for the people assisted by area food banks that receive 60 percent of produce grown by The Greenhouse Project. So, Charlie Abowd bought the excess mushrooms with the idea that he would make a special dish and use it to promote The Greenhouse Project.

I checked the price of oyster mushrooms at a local grocery store and found it to be about $18 a pound retail. Considering restaurants like Adele's purchase their produce wholesale for about half the price, they certainly didn't get a deal on this particular item.

After this was revealed, those making the original accusations then accused The Greenhouse Project of operating without a business license. However, there is no requirement for a business license for doing one-off transactions such as this, which easily falls into the category of a fundraiser for a nonprofit group.

The issue seemed settled at the time, but we can see now that, like a zombie, it was not dead.

Helget's next charge is that the greenhouse doesn't supply anything to the Carson High School culinary program, which is supposed to receive 10 percent of the produce. Helget claimed that Penny Reynolds, the person running the program, signed an agreement declining this produce, and that she is being kept from talking about this by her boss, Michele Lewis.

I talked to Reynolds about this. She said she knows nothing about any agreement to decline produce. She said she receives regular deliveries from the greenhouse that she signs for when they arrive.

As for being kept quiet to protect her job, Reynolds said next week is her last week with the culinary program, as she is retiring after 31 years. So, it would appear she has nothing to fear in terms of retaliation.

I visited The Greenhouse Project last week and took a look at the last few months of receipts signed by those receiving the produce, and saw several that were signed by Reynolds, predating the latest accusations made by Helget.

I also checked with the Ron Wood Center, F.I.S.H. and the Capital City Circles Initiative, three of the four agencies receiving the bulk of this produce. They all verified that they receive this produce on a regular basis, and the signed receipts back this up. The Ron Wood Center said they received more than 600 pounds last year, which is more than 20 percent of the total 2,600 pounds the Greenhouse Project produced. The receipts I spot checked seemed to confirm that the food banks were getting the 60 percent of produce pledged to them.

Helget claimed that the Capital City Circles Initiative doesn't distribute food. But a call to Shelly Aldean, president of the group, confirmed that they do in fact receive produce from the greenhouse to distribute to the people they are helping. This point of fact is also backed up by the signed receipts. Helget also claimed that the Circles Initiative is "run by our Mayor," which I presume she means Mayor Bob Crowell. According to the organization's website, Crowell is one of 23 members of the board of directors, but he is not one of the three officers (president, secretary, treasurer) listed.

The remaining 30 percent of what The Greenhouse Project distributes goes to the Community Supported Agriculture program, which consists of people who pay a subscription fee and receive baskets of produce on a regular basis. King verified they have records of all subscriptions, and what has been sent out.

The Greenhouse Project also provides the hanging flower baskets to decorate downtown Carson City. Businesses sponsor these baskets, of which $6,000 a year is given back to the city to pay for the person to water the baskets during the summer months.

Besides the produce, The Greenhouse Project does provide other benefits to the community.

It pays the Carson City School District $5,000 a year to lease the land it sits on, and that money is earmarked for the school's Future Farmers of America program. There are two agriculture classes at Carson High School who use the greenhouse on a weekly basis. In addition, special education students come to the greenhouse every week to learn about taking care of the plants.

It must also be noted that the Abowds donate considerable time and money to the Greenhouse Project every year. They put on the organization's largest fundraiser of the year, The Concert Under the Stars, staged in the street next to Adele's. According to the organization's latest 990 tax form from 2013, the events put on by the Abowds account for more than 60 percent of the organization's income.

On the subject of this 990 form (attached below), Helget claims that Karen Abowd did not disclose she is an elected city official on The Greenhouse Project's tax returns. However, there is nowhere on the 990 form to disclose this, nor if there a requirement to do so. There is a check mark next to Abowd's name listing her as one of four officers of the organization.

Helget also wrongly claims that the 990 form shows The Greenhouse Project has "$400,000 and counting in the bank!" She is confusing the listing of the assets on the 990 form for money in the bank. The organization's 990 form shows total assets of $501,538, of which $461,887 is for the value of the buildings and equipment. The end-of-year bank account balance was $23,762.

Both Reynolds and King acknowledge there are challenges to delivering produce to the school's culinary program, mostly due to the timing. Most of what is grown by The Greenhouse Project comes at a time when the culinary program is not in session.

Also, there have been recent difficulties with tomatoes due to an outbreak of rust mites. During my tour of the greenhouse, King showed me the tomato plants they are treating to get rid of the pests. That means no tomatoes for a while.

Because of these challenges, it's possible that offhand comments made by Reynolds may have been misconstrued or exaggerated to make it sound like the school wasn't receiving anything. This seems to be the root of the rumor being circulated by Helget.

Considering all of this evidence, is it possible that Helget's accusation that produce from the Greenhouse Project is being unfairly diverted to the Abowd's restaurant? Theoretically, yes, it might be possible, but highly unlikely. At most, there could be a few hundred pounds of produce that isn't being accounted for. But the value of this produce would be a fraction of what the Abowds personally donate to the organization, so there doesn't seem to be sufficient motive for them to doing this.

The fact is there is no evidence showing any diversion of this produce is taking place. Nothing in the records, and no testimony from anyone who has witnessed such activities. The only thing Helget offers here is pure speculation, apparently based on a rumor she heard about something Reynolds said that isn't true.

This should be the end to this controversy. But I doubt very much that it will, because for Helget, this is clearly a personal vendetta. Besides all of the accusations about the operations of the Greenhouse Project, Helget makes a lot of personal attacks against the Abowds. She calls the Abowds an "overrated family," along with other insults, and she even brought up a domestic violence arrest of a family member who is not connected to The Greenhouse Project or the restaurant in any way.

She also extends those attacks to others who question the accusations she is making. These attacks have been very abusive to other readers of this site. After she made a crude comment telling another reader to "remove your lips from the body parts of various people," I made the decision to permanently ban her from commenting on this site.

This is not my first go round with Helget. Just a few weeks ago, I was forced to look into another set of potentially libelous comments she made about Dana Lee Fruend, who until recently was the marketing director for Nevada Day, Inc. Helget claimed Fruend had arranged a secret contract between Nevada Day and company she controlled, and was "double dipping" by getting paid both through her salary and the contract.

The "contract" Helget pointed to turned out to be a proposal Fruend had presented to Nevada Day Executive Director Ken Hamilton last year, after giving notice that she intended to leave her job with the organization. The proposal called for Nevada Day to hire her company, Dream Management, to handle marketing and other services. Hamilton told Fruend at the time he didn't want to go in that direction, and no other action was taken on the proposal. It was not presented to the organization's board of directors, never voted on, never approved, never signed, and there is no evidence of payments being made.

However, Helget didn't accept this explanation. In the absence of any actual evidence, she peppered me with more accusations and personal attacks. As with her accusations against The Greenhouse Project, she continually sent me false information, such as claiming certain people were employees of Nevada Day who weren't, others who she said were on the board but weren't, people who were "fired" but weren't, etc.

Through all of this, Helget has shown a complete disregard for the facts. She continually made claims that were very easily proven false. Many of these falsehoods she could have discovered herself with a minimal effort on her part. But whenever I confronted her on these bogus claims, she would never concede, and just kept arguing.

That said, we need people like Lisa Helget to challenge and question what goes on in our city. We the people are responsible for holding our public officials accountable. Helget also should be commended for stepping up and running for office, something that 99 percent of the rest of the citizens here will never do. We need more people to step up to take on this responsibility.

Helget does have a legitimate criticism over whether The Greenhouse Project should have received tax dollars from the city, and whether Karen Abowd's position on the Carson City Board of Supervisors had an undue influence over that funding. It is also legitimate to question if nonprofit groups like The Greenhouse Project are living up to their mission to benefit the community.

But, the job of public watchdog comes with responsibilities. You have to be sure what you are reporting is factual, lest you become the boy who cried wolf. Making baseless accusations — with a few nasty personal insults thrown in for good measure — does not count as legitimate criticism, and it does damage to our community by poisoning the well of public discourse. How many people are going to be willing to step up to help their community if they are going to be subjected to unfair attacks like this?

Unfortunately, Helget chose not to seek the truth, but instead used whatever rumor and innuendo she could scrape up to smear the person who beat her in the last election, and attacked anyone who disagreed. I doubt anything I have written here will dissuade her from continuing these attacks. In this quest, she is like Captain Ahab chasing the white whale.

Some of those who read this will complain that it's all political. It's not. Carson Now as been very accommodating to articles and comments submitted by people of every political stripe for the 6+ years we have been online. We have always welcomed your views, whatever they are, and will continue to do so.

The three big areas where we draw the line are libel, unauthorized use of copyright material, and personal attacks. The first two are legal, as no one wants to get sued, and we avoid that by following the law. The restriction on personal attacks is in place to foster constructive discussion that engages readers. If these discussions get too far out of hand, it scares away others from participating, which is bad for business and the community.

During my exchanges with Helget, she criticized me for taking sides against her. Personally, I believe I've proven that I'm not into playing favorites. The first big story I covered for Carson Now was the Nugget Project. I was the only one digging out the facts for this fatally flawed effort, which cost me business and a number of friends in this town. It should be noted that Karen Abowd and her allies were on the other side of that issue.

More recently, I wrote about legal problems at the Brewery Arts Center, despite the wishes of my good friends over there. I felt it was important to communicate these problems to the community, despite the cost to me personally.

I didn't get into this business to make friends. Cutting through the noise of local controversies to find the truth is a mission I take seriously. I wish we could do more of it. We can't make smart decisions for our community based on bad information. There is so much garbage posing as news being circulated today that it makes finding the truth very difficult. I believe this is probably the most dangerous long-term threat to our society that exists today, because without truth, democracy dies.

The idealist side of me hopes this article will help lead us to have better, more constructive political discussions in Carson City. But my realist side tells me not to hold my breath.

Just to be overly fair, because Helget can't comment on this site, here is a link to her Facebook page where I would expect she will have more to say about this.

Update: After this article was published, I was made aware that the money provided by the city to The Greenhouse Project was approved prior to Karen Abowd serving on the Board of Supervisors. As such, any claim that she may have used her elected office to get this funding would appear to be without merit.