Market succeeds despite turmoil

SOUTH PORTLAND — Continued conflict among key supporters of the South Portland Farmers' Market appears to have cost vendors a marketing campaign to close out their sophomore season.

On July 25, Market Manager Caitlin Jordan submitted a sign application, asking to post small placards at nine roadside hotspots for political advertising from Aug. 1 to Oct. 31. The idea, said Jordan on Friday, was to mix in a pitch for the market in amongst the signs for local and national candidates for public office.

However, Jordan expressed frustration because the sign permit request did not got before the City Council until Sept. 5 and, she claims, she was not told it was to be considered even then. Jordan, who sits on the Town Council in neighboring Cape Elizabeth, said conflicting council meetings would have kept her from attending the South Portland session anyway, but she would have sent another market representative had she know her group was on the agenda.

As it was, the permit application was tabled.

“We didn’t have enough information on the timing of it and the locations,” said Mayor Patti Smith, immediately after the Sept. 5 meeting. “We already passed an order in November of 2011 that was supposed to span this time, and there was a lot of confusion on the council as to why another order was put in.

“That one said signs would be posted the day of the market, while this one was all the time at certain locations,” said Smith, noting that the permit will be reconsidered at the council’s Sept. 17 meeting.

“We just didn’t feel like we had enough information and, without anyone here from the farmers market, it was hard to figure out what the intent was,” said Councilor Rosemarie De Angelis, who helped found the market last year and the past spring fought Jordan’s drive to move it from Thomas Knight Park to Hinckley Drive, next to Mill Creek Park.

De Angelis said that the Farmers Market Advisory Committee, which she chairs, was never consulted on the sign request and, in fact, has not met since last spring, when tensions regarding the proposed market move began to boil over.

At the Cape Elizabeth home of her family-owned Alewive’s Brook Farm Friday, Jordan complained that she had yet to be informed of the vote to table her sign permit. In addition, she supplied a July 23 email from South Portland Code Enforcement Officer Pat Doucette advising her of the need to file a permit request for the campaign-style signs. She also supplied an email from City Manager Jim Gailey earlier that day, in which he advised that last year’s sign permit was for that season only.

Jordan also supplied emails showing that De Angelis’ advisory committee had not met because she refused it permission to do so.

On July 16, Adrian Dowling, one of two remaining members on the advisory committee, asked to meet to discuss the health of the market since its move.

Jordan replied later that day, welcoming the meeting and suggesting that membership be opened up to “more of the public.”

However, De Angelis, in a July 17 reply, said, “This committee is in transition so we are not in a position to meet right now.”

De Angelis noted three defections from the committee in the spring, writing, “Clearly there was a loss of sense of TEAM, and I need to consider how to move forward.

 

“This is a city ad hoc committee formed by me as Mayor at that time,” write De Angelis. “Right now I am working to consider how the committee would be constructed, if it continues, and what would be its mission. Right now all is ON HOLD.”

Jordan followed by in an email to the two remaining committee members other than De Angelis, saying she did not understand the reason for the stay on meetings, and suggesting that vendors would support the formation of a “Friends of the South Portland Farmers Market” group separate from the advisory committee.

Apparently, De Angelis found out about that idea, writing to Jordan on July 20 to say, “If you want to start a friends group, that is your option but it does not replace the committee.”

“I would appreciate more transparent conversations to avoid further splintering of the few committee members left,” wrote De Angelis. “If you want to comment on something I say or do, please be courteous enough to include me in the communication, rather than commenting about me or my communications to others. Negative and hostile communications is one of the things that resulted in losing several good, hard working committee people who supported the market previously. That is one of the reasons we are ON HOLD, to determine who, what and how the committee might function.”

De Angelis and Jordan also have disagreed on how the market is faring. Twice over the summer, De Angelis reported that multiple vendors had left “because they no making any money.”  

Jordan acknowledges that “three or four” vendors did pull out, but said her stand has done as well in South Portland on Thursdays, even with ongoing construction in Knightville, as it does many Wednesdays in Portland’s Monument Square.

“All I can say is I lost money last year,” said Dick Piper, owner of Piper’s Ranch in Buckfield and the market’s lone meat vendor, on Thursday. “This year, I’m making money. And I look around and I see six vendors who weren’t here last year. So, for me, I say it’s doing OK.”

Meanwhile, Gailey may have provided the best summary of the market turmoil, after Jordan presented him with copies of her July exchange with De Angelis.

“I truthfully have no idea what to think of the hostility between you and Councilor De Angelis,” he wrote. “Plain and simple, you two can’t get along. Sorry to say, but it is on equal footing as you both dish it out at each other. 

“I’m not looking to get in the middle of it,” wrote Gailey.