Market wrangling ends with approval

City planning chair faults council for ‘unprecedented’ testimony

SOUTH PORTLAND — After more than two months of backstage wrangling, the South Portland Farmers’ Market will have a new home for its sophomore season, but a Planning Board waiver that enabled the move came with a stern rebuke for city councilors.

The City Council voted 5-2 on May 7 – with Councilor Rosemarie De Angelis and Mayor Patti Smith opposed – to close Hinckley Drive on Thursdays from 2-8 p.m. for the market, which will open for the season May 17. However, it took the issuance of a “special exemption” waiver for outdoor sales and display by the Planning Board May 8 to allow farmers to set up shop in the street.

In what Planning Board chairman Rob Schreiber called an “unprecedented” display by the council, three members showed up to testify to the background on the issue, while a fourth, De Angelis, authored an email expressly asking the board to refuse the waiver.

“The council is asking us for our opinion, yet they are here tonight telling us their opinion,” said Schreiber. “When we are sitting as a quasi-judicial body, where we can be challenged in court, it’s really important that it be very clear that we are independent.”

After two hours of debate, the board issued the waiver 6-0, with Schreiber abstaining from the vote as symbolic protest of the perceived council interference.

“I just feel that there’s been undo influence,” said Schreiber, explaining his refusal to vote. “We have our job, the City Council has theirs.”

Schreiber then asked for a workshop with the city attorney to go over the roles and responsibilities of the Planning Board and the City Council in relation to one another, stressing the importance of setting lines of demarcation by adding, “I want that workshop before we hear any other application coming before us.”

However, City Planner Tex Haeuser said Monday that Schreiber probably won’t get his wish. There are already applications scheduled in the pipeline for public vetting, including an application for a second farmers market at the Maine Mall. That hearing is scheduled for the May 21 Planning Board meeting.

According to Caitlin Jordan, market manager, the mall approached her group with a hosting offer in March, shortly after news broke that the farmers wanted to move out of Thomas Knight Park, in hopes of attracting a wider audience. Most farmers rejected that idea, although one of two to quit the market over the long-running location debate – Pamela Harwood, of Longwoods Alpaca Farm in Cumberland – jumped in to help organize the mall showcase.

In the meantime, with city councilors hung up on Thomas Knight Park vs. Hinckley Drive, a third option arose at the 11^th hour when the Mill Creek Hannaford offered use of its parking lot. Farmers rejected that gesture, as well, on ambiance grounds similar to the mall pass, said Jordan. The farmers want to be in a pastoral, park-like setting, she said, noting that Hinckley Drive runs adjacent to South Portland’s signature spot, Mill Creek Park. Jordan said farm vendors felt Thomas Knight Park was too far off the beaten path, blaming the location on last year’s financial loses, with that reason trumping even repeated rainouts.

Having lost the battle for Thomas Knight Park, De Angelis urged the Planning Board to reject Hinckley Drive, citing concerns for traffic, parking, pedestrian safety, and an appearance of council favoritism for a seasonal market over nearby brick-and-mortar stores. The latter was the same argument Councilor Gerard Jalbert made Feb. 28 against a promotional sign De Angelis suggested for the Thomas Knight Park site, just before kicking off the Hinckley Drive alternative.

In a push for the Hannaford offer, De Angelis took to the Knightville Mill Creek page on Facebook immediately after the May 7 council vote, stumping for others to do the same.

However, in a quirk of the ordinance language De Angelis herself helped craft when creating the South Portland Farmers Market, vendors can only display their wares on public property.

On the south end of town, the mall can apply for an outdoor sale and display permit, which each of 14 farmers expected to sell there must apply individually for $150 vendor licenses. The Knightville market, however, is a unique entity recognized in South Portland’s code of ordinances. As such, its members become part of an association and do not have to obtain the vendor license. The catch is that they are then bound by the enabling ordinance, including the restriction to public property – initially envisioned as a park but, in the case of Hickley Drive, a road also counts.

Hannaford’s parking lot does not, however, and City Manager Jim Gailey noted late in council deliberations May 7 that an ordinance change would be necessary before the market could set up on private property.

At the May 8 Planning Board meeting, Jordan said the time it would take for that to happen – up to a month, in order to schedule multiple readings, public hearings and board review – would doom the market. The remaining 17 vendors, she said, would not wait that long past the start of their selling season. Instead, they would melt away to markets in other towns, or at the mall, which hopes to open May 29.

That revelation, more than the arguments made by De Angelis and about a dozen like-minded citizens, seemed to weigh most heavily on the Planning Board.

“I’m not crazy about the Hinckley Drive closing,” said Caroline Hendry, “but, on the other hand, I feel uncomfortable making a make-or-break decision about the farmers market, essentially what they are saying we are doing if we don’t approve Hinckley.”

Still, there may be a bright side to the street closure.

“As someone who lives in the neighborhood, I have to tell you that Hinckley Drive is a menace anyway,” said Hendry. “Closing it down for six hours a week might just be a blessing.”