SOUTH PORTLAND — A quest to help promote the South Portland
Farmers Market has turned into a City Council debate on where the market should
live, creating hurt feelings, accusations of back-room dealings, and the
suggestion that the fledging farmstand may not live to see its second year.
The City Council is scheduled to workshop the
issue April 23, when proposals are expected to include moving the market to
Hinckley Drive, next to Mill Creek Park, or leaving it at its present location
at Thomas Knight Park, albeit off the park cobblestones and on Waterman Drive.
The latter plan also includes a request for
council permission to place a 4-by-8-foot sign on Broadway advertising the
Thursday afternoon market.
The sign concept was first proffered at a Feb.
27 workshop by Councilor Rosemarie De Angelis, who championed creation of the
market during her term as mayor. The sign met stiff opposition, particularly
from first-year Councilor Jerry Jalbert, who said it could be seen as municipal
favoritism for food booths over other brick-and-mortar grocery stores in the Knightville
District.
The debate has worn on now for two months,
largely out of the public eye, and market manager Caitlin Jordan said the very
existence of the farmers market is in jeopardy. Even if consensus is reached
April 23, the council will not be able to act until its next official meeting,
set for May 7. Posting requirements to close either street means the market
will miss its planned May 10 opening. Even that, said Jordan, is too late a
date for some in her circle.
“I had 20 vendors, but I’ve lost three because
of all the back-and-forth with the council,” she said last week. “On top of
that, I’ve had five or six new applications withdrawn.”
Jordan claims that at least some of those
defections have as much to do with uncivil emails sent to and from the market’s
ad hoc advisory committee in the past several weeks as it does with scheduling
and logistical issues.
De Angelis and Mayor Patti Smith have both
confirmed the nature of those emails, with De Angelis saying she “feels
horrible” at the “hurtful” way she’s been portrayed in some of them.
The Current filed on April 11 a request for
those emails under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act. The emails were unavailable
for review as of the Tuesday morning deadline for this week’s issue of the
Current.
Smith, who has seen the emails, acknowledged
that feelings have been hurt on all sides.
“That’s the unfortunate fallout of the
situation,” she said on Friday. “I am always disappointed when the level or
type of communication is not a productive one. It happens. People get
emotionally attached, they lose focus and it’s hard for them, I think, to see
other perspectives.”
Those perspectives date back to initial approval
of the market one year ago. At that time, Jordan said, the market vendors
voiced a strong preference for the Hinckley Drive site, based on a belief that
Thomas Knight Park was too far off the beaten path. That was shot down, in
part, because of parking issues near Mill Creek businesses, a belief that the
Mill Pond ducks would create an issue, and the fact that setting up shop in
Thomas Knight Park would require fewer updates to existing ordinances.
Jalbert said that, being new to the council, he
was not aware when he asked Jordan at the annual Rotary Club dinner about
Hinckley Drive as a possible alternative, which, he thought, would end the
divide over the proposed Broadway sign. That conversation, said Jalbert, “took
all of two minutes,” and he rejects the idea that he meant to conspire with
Jordan against what the council then had on the table, or to perform an end-run
on the market advisory committee, chaired by De Angelis.
For her part, De Angelis said her only concern
is that Jalbert then began floating the idea to other councilors, when Jordan
gave her enthusiastic assent to the move, in part because of poor foot traffic
last season.
“Whether it’s one place or the other is neither
here nor there,” De Angelis said. “It’s that none of this was ever brought to
the advisory committee for consideration.”
Jalbert and Jordan both say there were unaware
they needed an approval from the advisory group, which Jordan claims is “mostly
hand-picked” by De Angelis and thus supports the Thomas Knight Park location.
Meanwhile, Jalbert rejects De Angelis’ claim that he circumvented the public
process to line-up support from his peers for the Hinckley Drive alternative.
Although he admits to informally polling other councilors on the topic, Jalbert
cites Maine’s Right-to-Know-Law, claiming he’s within his rights to talk with
other members of the council, so long as three or more of them are not in on
the same conversation at the same time.
“The notion that this was back-door politics and the level that this issue
has raised to is disheartening,” said Jordan, adding that she only agreed to De
Angelis’ sign request after being told there would be no action on her request
to reconsider Hinckley Drive, made long before Jalbert intervened.
“I was told
it absolutely would not happen no matter what,” she said.
Smith also
denies claims that she pushed back consideration of Jalbert’s proposal in order
to break momentum for a site change.
Jalbert said
he expected an April 4 workshop, but that did not happen, only because, Smith
said, the annual budget took precedence. She also said that, given the lesson
of public reaction to recent parking changes planned for Ocean Street, the
workshop had to be put off in order to give “all stakeholders” time to regroup.
“Moving the location put us back to square one,”
Smith said. “Although it looks like a delay, we’ve had to scramble because the
sign turned out to not be an easy slam dunk. I hope everyone understands that
we have to do our due process.”
That said, Smith did seem to side with De
Angelis’ claim that Jalbert worked the issue with too much vigor outside of
public view.
“There may be something to that, which is just
understanding due process of how we operate as a City Council,” she said. “What
we try to strive for, the very point of us working as public civic leaders, is
that our deliberations are public and transparent.”
Smith downplayed the seeming discontent on all
sides of the farmers market issue, chalking most of the debate up to “growing
pains.”
Although Jalbert, Jordan, De Angelis and Smith
all intimate harsh words have been exchanged, even while none are willing to
quote directly from the exchanges, Smith said that’s hardly what matters.
“I know that not everyone might have every piece
of information that I might have, but the bottom line is that we are going to
discuss potentially moving the location of the market on the 23rd,” she
said. “That’s where people want to be if they have in interest in the issue.”
More to the point, Smith added, “I know that
absolutely everyone wants it to succeed.”
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