Farmers Market Chickens Come Home to Roost

OP ED

      Our society has come up with too few improvements in the way it manages to govern, but it has marvelously perfected, while simultaneously coarsening, the techniques by which it insults the governed.

One of these is to simply deny the reality of the experience of its citizens, ignore their concerns and override their warnings. In a bare majority opinion, members of Croton’s planning board on January 10 encouraged the village board to approve a special permit for an indoor farmers market while voicing relatively mild concerns about parking and the impact on existing businesses.

Certain planning board members unequivocally expressed the personal opinion that an indoor farmers market within 200 feet of Zeytinia represented no competition and that adequate parking space would be available. One has to wonder how familiar they are with Croton’s checkered retailing history and whether they would express a similar opinion if someone wanted to open a hardware store a few doors from Croton Hardware.

Although the village code lists the situations in which a special permit must be obtained, it makes no mention about the scope or content of special permits. The only stipulation in the special permit granted to Community Markets, Inc., is designation of the area where employees must park. Yet nothing is said about the unloading (and re-loading) of produce from vendors’ trucks, the nature of the goods to be sold, and similar considerations.

More important, given the copious concerns expressed about economic impact and parking congestion, the village board foolishly failed to reserve the right to terminate the special permit at its discretion. Croton’s existing tax-paying merchants who deserved the village board's protection and the ignored public have again suffered from casual, tin-eared government.

One aspect of Croton's special permit process is questionable with respect to its propriety if not its legality:  Its practice of drawing up the text of a resolution of approval in advance of the special permit hearing. This ad hoc, one-size-fits-all resolution then becomes part of the special permit package handed to trustees in advance of the hearing. In other words, Croton will listen to citizens’ comments, but doesn’t give a damn about what they say. Its mind is made up in advance.

At the village board meeting of February 6, strident cautions were voiced by the public and by two trustees. Eloquently characterizing the proposed action as “parachuting in a supermarket,” trustee Casey Raskob broke ranks and joined a furious former mayor Gregory Schmidt in opposing the special permit. Trustees Galelli and Murtaugh, champs at rubber-stamping, predictably voted in favor of granting the special permit.

With the trustees deadlocked, Mayor Wiegman stepped in and voted in favor of issuing  the faulted special permit for the operation of a farmers market in the former Blockbuster store on Saturdays between February 11 and May 26, 2012. This vote makes him solely responsible for the shoehorning of a large group of unmistakably competitive retailers into this mini strip mall, already a planning abortion and a parking nightmare. In the face of this doubtful honor, one has to wonder how the mayor has the gumption to shop anywhere in Croton. Undoubtedly, voters will remember this should he have the temerity to run again.

Interviewed by Journal News reporter Robert Marchant for a March 4 story on the growing imbroglio, trustee Ann Galelli acknowledged the problem and, in a rare moment of candor for a politician, admitted responsibility. “We have to look into the nitty-gritty. We’ll explore everything, look into what’s in the leases, maybe street parking, whether there’s room for additional parking spaces.”

 “Exploring everything, looking into the nitty-gritty, what’s in the leases and whether there’s room for additional parking spaces” are the very heart of the matter. Ms. Galelli unwittingly ticked off the practical details that should have been specifically explored by the mayor and his cohorts before they rubber-stamped the now-embarrassingly toothless special permit.

As the putative author of the 2004 Gateway Law, perhaps Ms. Galelli would also oblige us and explain why that overtly anti-business law, which is still very much on the books, specifically bans parking lots anywhere in a Croton that sorely needs all the parking space it can muster.

In the meantime, bottom-line damage to local merchants and insult to the public weal continue apace every Saturday until May 26. Shame on those responsible for such a shabby, bottom-drawer performance. The only wisdom to come out of this unfortunate incident is its revelation of the doubtful protection afforded by special permits, especially those granted by tone-deaf public officials.

A Call to Consumer Activism

OP ED

Croton's irrationally unbalanced administration speaks from both sides of its mouth. One side pretends to be concerned about the commercial health of the community's businesses. The other side repeatedly announces that the Village has made sweetheart deals that fundamentally damage the very businesses it claims to be its primary concern.

A case in point is the so-called winter farmers market about to open on Saturdays in the former Blockbuster store in the cramped little strip mall adjoining the earlier Z-shaped Van Wyck mall. There cannot be a more unseemly and inappropriate time or place for such an establishment in Croton. Navigating that strip mall’s tight little parking area requires nearly professional driving skills.

Croton residents looking for a way to express their displeasure at the high-handedly precipitous granting of a special permit based on no research by the Village can use the powerful weapon of the boycott. This would also demonstrate support for the taxpaying local retail businesses damaged by the Village's irresponsible action.

The boycott takes its name from Capt. Charles Boycott, a land agent for absentee landlords in Ireland. In 1880, after evicting tenant farmers from lands he controlled in western Ireland he attempted to recruit local farmers to harvest his crops. They refused and Boycott was forced to bring in workers from Northern Ireland. He also brought in police, but predicted violence never occurred. In the end, Boycott spent 10,000 Pounds to harvest 500 Pounds worth of crops. Irish nationalist leader Charles Parnell quipped that “it cost one shilling for every turnip dug from Boycott’s land.”

Extended boycotts have a long and honorable history, including the boycott of British goods by colonists during the American Revolution a century before and the boycott of British textiles led by Mahatma Gandhi in the 1920s. Gandhi also advocated that Indians spin their own yarns to make cloth. Other notable boycotts include the year-long Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott in 1956 and the grape and lettuce boycotts led by Cesar Chavez in the 1970s. Notable, too, was the US-led boycott of the summer Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980

As a form of protest, the boycott is legal under common law and. can be highly effective. Abstaining from patronizing the farmers market by consumers and supporting established local businesses would also send an unambiguous message to Croton’s duplicitous administration.