New report on market deal details ordered

The board that operates the farmers’ market on city-owned land at Morrow Park did not get a year-long extension to their licensing agreement, on Monday – councillors will likely decide about that early in 2019.

Giving the board “a year’s grace” didn’t sit well with Coun. Keith Riel, who said that the market undercuts farmers.

It happens, Riel said, because the market board has allowed wholesalers to truck in food from the Ontario Food Terminal without clearly telling the customer they don’t grow what they sell.

“What kind of farmers’ market do we want to run?” Riel asked, adding that he doesn’t shop there anymore. “I don’t like the way it’s run.”

But Mayor Diane Therrien said many market vendors bake, make and grow the food they sell there – and they pay when customers stay away.

“Boycotting the market hurts more people than it helps,” she said. “People are just trying to make a living.”

City staff had recommended that council give the Peterborough and District Farmers’ Market Association (PDFMA) a yearlong extension on its licensing agreement, to May 2020.

The idea was to give staff an extra year to prepare a new bidding process to invite any prospective operators to run the market for five years, until May 2025.

But on Monday councillors voted to order a new city staff report with details such as when a bidding process could be launched, what it might look like and how citizens might be consulted on what kind of market they want.

That report is expected sometime in early February. At that time, councillors will also be expected to consider whether to extend the PDFMA’s agreement to 2020.

City commissioner Alan Seabrooke wrote in a report that the PDFMA deserved to have its licensing agreement extended for a year because they had no violations of the city licensing agreement. But local lawyer John Dunn wrote an email Sunday to the mayor and council saying he was “truly astonished” that Seabrooke would write that.

The licensing agreement obliges the PDFMA to follow rules set out in the Corporations Act, Dunn points out in his email – yet he writes that Seabrooke never took action to ensure the PDFMA provides its members with an annual auditor’s report.

That’s the most important obligation of the Corporations Act, and Dunn writes that audits have never been distributed to members of the market.

Wade Matthews, operations manager with the market, wrote in an email to The Examiner last week that annual audit reports are completed and reported to PDFMA members every year.

But Dunn isn’t buying that, writing in his email that they claimed to have done an audit recently but only ever released a summary of the apparent findings to its members.

“A precis or summary doesn’t cut it,” he wrote, adding that he hopes the new council won’t want to continue having a market that “allows heavy participation by fake farmers.”

Seabrooke told councillors the city has no business trying to tell the PDFMA how to conduct its internal business: all they need to determine is whether they follow the rules set out by the city (and Seabrooke says they have).

He also said many farmers’ markets have wholesalers – and that the Morrow Park market has had re-sellers there for 40 years.

Coun. Lesley Parnell also reminded councillors that the PDFMA pays $60,000 rent annually to use Morrow Park – that shouldn’t be overlooked, she said.

But Coun. Kim Zippel said she thinks there should be a public consultation on what type of a market citizens want.

Seabrooke said that’s possible; he suggested the use of online surveys, for example, before the city opens the bidding process for an operator.