How to Kill a Farmer’s Market.
By Jim Conley • Jul 13th, 2007 • Email This Post to a Friend •
Print This Post
• Email this author
Hey now, here’s a great idea. Why don’t we take one of the most successful farmer’s markets in the country, say like the one in Brookline, and charge it $2,300 per season to operate on town property. We’ll do this for several years, even though most communities don’t charge these types of markets anything to set up.
Then let’s put the head of the Town’s Engineering Department in charge of negotiating a new contract with the market operator. Because when you do that, the Engineer will tell the market operator that in order to continue selling at the merchant-only parking lot in 2008, the farmers will need to cover the lost revenue from meters in the lot. That’s about $14,300 in missing coin by the Engineer’s calculations.
Once done, have the local board of selectmen sign on to the proposed 500 percent increase, even though it means that signing on will effectively kill the market.
Well-informed sources tell me that that is exactly what has happened with Brookline’s Thursday Farmer’s Market.
Look, unlike years ago when Brookline’s market was a rarity, communities throughout the area have their own version of a farmer’s market. And when you add more rent to the organizer’s budget, the organizer has to ask the farmer to cover the rent increase. The farmers can’t and/or won’t absorb the additional costs, so they’ll move on.
It’s basic retail.
This shows you just how out of touch - or desperate for revenue - are the Brookline Selectmen. When we lose the farmer’s market, we lose a big part of our community. But that matters not to a board of five stooges who see the fruits of the land coming not from corn stalks but from construction cranes.
Isn’t it better that we lose the current crop of selectmen instead of the Thursday market?
Update: I asked Town Administrator Richard Kelliher for comment on this story. He didn’t reply, even though serving as spokesperson for the Selectmen is one of the few items detailed in the local law that establishes his position.
Update (2): The TAB has been treated to the Town Hall spin that officials are “considering the fee increase.” They’re not considering an increase - it’s their position in the negotiations. You’re done “considering” when you tell the other party what you need from the agreement. Does anyone really believe that the Town’s chief engineer is out on his own on this? In Brookline? Please.
And it beats me how the Town’s commercial liaison, Marge Amster, can both be responsible for the increase (by writing a memo or such) and then accompany the farmer’s market director to a meeting called to talk the Town’s chief engineer out of the fee increase. I believe that the farmers see Amster as an ally.
Looks to me like someone is being hung out to dry. Figures that it’d be one of the few women in a non-clerical position with the Town.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
Email this author | All posts by Jim Conley
If this happened in Boston, Cambridge or Newton, can you imagine the telephone calls to the Mayor’s ofice in protest? There is accountability in these cities. But here in 19th century Brookline, with five Selectmen serving staggered terms, each one can blame the others. And the Town Administrator’s authority is to serve as handmaiden to the Selectmen’s wiles. So there is no accountability. Perhaps some musicians in Town can come up with a FARM AID CONCERT to protest any efforts to keep us from getting down on the farm one paltry day each week for the summer months. Brookline has failed to provide affordable housing because of the ineptitude of the Selectmen. Now they want to deprive the Town of fresh, reasonably priced local farm products to please our palates. First, the Selectmen moved the Farmers’ Market to make way for a hotel, a not very affordable one at that, for which the Town gets bubkus by way of rent, subsidizing the then favorite son hotel developer, who cashed in “big time” a few years later with no “juice” to the Town. So the relocation of the Farmers’ Market to the Centre Street lot was called an inconvenience to larger quarters, thus benefiting Brookline residents desiring fresh fruit and vegetables at reasonable prices that will help to keep local farms in business. But apparently this has gone on too long. Perhaps EDAB did a cost/benefit analysis of the Farmers’ Market. It’s too bad EDAB has declined my suggestion that its activities be examined with such an analysis. Let’s face it, our Selectmen are hayseeds without hearts if the word on the street is accurate. Maybe there will be an abundant tomato crop this year to provide the ammunition to sauce the Selectmen.
Brookline High School students might consider a musical on this subject: “How are you gonna keep them down on the farm, after they’ve seen Brookline?” Subtitle: “Animal Farm meets real farms.”
Let’s do a Brookline comparative: (1) The BOS meets once a week (except in the summer). (2) The farmers’ market takes place once a week during the summer months only. What costs/benefits are provided by (1) and by (2)? At least with (2) the farmers clean up after themselves. The heartburn caused by (1) is greater than that caused by (2)’s fresh fruits and vegetables which are much easier to swallow. Let’s have a referendum on the elimination of (1) or (2) instead of an override.
[...] Get ready for the town hall spin on the farmer’s market debacle [see previous post]. It will likely go this way: “We’re not imposing a $14,000 fee on the farmer’s market, we just did an analysis of how much coin was lost from meters in the Centre Street Parking lot. We’re still negotiating the contract.” [...]