City gives market board licence until April 2019
The city has signed a new agreement to allow the board of directors of the Peterborough Farmers’ Market to continue operating the Saturday market for a year, says the city CAO.
“A licence agreement between the city of Peterborough and the Peterborough and District Farmers’ Market Association has indeed now been executed,” wrote CAO Allan Seabrooke in an email to The Examiner on Thursday evening.
He wrote that the agreement is in effect until April 30, 2019.
Mayor Daryl Bennett confirmed that an agreement has been signed, but referred all other questions to the city’s legal department.
It was unclear on Thursday evening how a licensing agreement differs from a lease, but city solicitor Patricia Lester couldn’t be reached for comment on Thursday evening.
PDFMA marketing director Mark Jones was also unavailable for comment, as was Gabriel Poliquin, the Ottawa lawyer acting for the board of directors.
Coun. Dean Pappas, who has advocated for the city to hold a competitive bid process for a market operator instead of automatically going with the PDFMA, said on Thursday that council can still ask for request-for-proposals for a market operator after this agreement expires in 2019.
“I would have liked to have seen an RFP happen this year – but that’s not going to happen,” he said Thursday.
Tensions have grown lately at the farmers’ market between local growers and re-sellers who buy food from places such as the Ontario Food Terminal and re-sell without necessarily telling the consumer that the produce isn’t homegrown.
Market members held a closed meeting on Jan. 8 to potentially evict seven local growers and artisans, allegedly over aggressive behaviour (although the nature of that behaviour was never explained, and a gag order was placed on members).
On Thursday evening The Examiner reached one of the seven vendors at risk of expulsion; they said they wanted to speak to their lawyers before commenting.
The market is a non-profit corporation that rents city land at Morrow Park on lands zoned as a public service district – meaning the land is meant to be used for public benefit.
At least one other group, the Peterborough Regional Farmers’ Network, has expressed interest in operating the farmers’ market.
Neil Hannam, the president of the Network, said Thursday he’d like to hear from the city and the PDFMA how a market with many resellers constitutes a public service – in accordance with the zoning – rather than a commercial venture.
“I’d be very interested to hear from the PDFMA what re-selling means, as community benefit,” he said.
The Examiner asked the mayor that question in late January, and was referred to the city’s legal department.
No comment was available then from city solicitor Lester at the time (and she wasn’t available on Thursday evening).
Coun. Keith Riel said Thursday that the seven vendors facing expulsion have hired a lawyer and so has the market’s board of directors. He’s concerned the dispute could end up in court soon.
“Who would be stuck in the middle? The city,” Riel said. “We could be dragged into it.”
Key to all this could be the licensing agreement, Riel pointed out.
But when he learned late Thursday that the agreement had been signed, he said he received only a scant overview of the document from the mayor’s office, via email.
He wrote back late in the day Thursday to ask to see the full agreement, he said; a few hours later on Thursday evening, he’d yet to hear back from the mayor.
“I want to see the contract,” he said. “I think as a city councillor, I have the right to see it.”
Bennett could not be reached again later on Thursday evening to comment on whether city councillors will be allowed to read the full agreement.
At a meeting in January, councillors voted down an idea from Coun. Diane Therrien to have the city open a competitive bidding process to find a market operator. Only Pappas and Riel voted along with Therrien (who couldn’t be reached for comment on Thursday).
At that meeting, Bennett said the city was negotiating a new market lease with the current board and would expose itself to legal action if negotiations were cut short.
In response, a Toronto lawyer representing 11 vendors at the market – including the seven at risk of expulsion – wrote to the mayor and council to question that assertion.
Douglas Best of the firm Miller Thomson Lawyers wrote that the last lease expired in May 2010; without a lease, he saw no way the city could be sued for opening a competitive bid process.