001commissioner here commissioner young here and commissioner Chandler will be joining us shortly she's on her way okay so now we open to the first public commentary looks no approval of it I'm sorry now now we approve the agenda so I'd need a motion to approve motion to approve second all those in favor aye any opposed okay okay seeing none so now we would have the first public commentary but there are no members of the public here to comment so we'll move on to approval of minutes of the previous meetings this is approval of the October 17th meeting I move to approve second all those in favor aye any opposed okay great no presentations okay so then we'll move on to regular business okay um the first thing I have in your packet for you is
002a summary of the results of the customer dot surveys we did we do this every year we did it for about a month and the full results are also in this packet but I didn't feel like we needed to go over all of it you're welcome to look at that um what I did pull out that I thought you know was interesting is since you know one of the Commission's main jobs is to advise on vendor makeup and been to recruitment you know what are people buying what would they like to see more of and then I broke down what our current mix is of vendors for us to look at so of course but Jesus number 121 people that's why they were there that day fruit was second and baked goods was third so
003those were the top three things then we kind of get into this secondary category people are buying the artisans at plants and seedlings value-added and flowers this would vary depending on the time of year this was conducted in the fall and then finally we have dairy meat and hot ready-to-eat food what's funny is when you ask what people would like to see more of it kind of almost which is um so most people want to see more ready-to-eat food options more artisan options um actually which I was a little surprised about but you know I think you can always have like unlike some other products artisans are so varied you know it's definitely interesting but especially because we had earlier this year put a cap on the number of artisans we wanted to admit I
004guess I would love to hear if this change is anyone's like baked goods and cheese are also people wanting to see more of and then kind of secondary they listed craft beer kombucha organic fruit hot drinks and more meat and something I did hear from the volunteer who was conducting the study was a lot of people verbally told him they would like to see more organic options what was interesting about that is there are there were at least on the day that using the studies several organic options we do have if you look down the current vendor mix at least 15 vendors that are using organic practices and they're always represented at market usually more than one and so one thing that tells me is maybe we're not doing a good enough job labeling or
005with our signage so yes there's a question we could bring more in but I think maybe in this case we might need to do a better job of just communicating to our customers that those options are are there yeah and the organic practices they're actually certified organic no not necessarily those are certified and non-certified okay so are you referring right now to products that people would like to see more of that is the feedback that we got because I see it says specifically organic fruit yeah so these are the the organic fruit was a written feedback we got and then just regular organic practices that was actually verbal because I know we get a lot of people asking for organic apples and it's anywhere you go that you're gonna buy organic apples they're gonna be
006from like Washington State you know areas like that so that's kind of a tough one mm-hmm so I didn't know if people were specifically speaking of fruit what if they were talking about organic in general I think I think both yeah but I do think we have a lot of organic vegetable options already yeah that we just need to better communicate but I've seen that too I think I've been playing AI from that's a buyer the fruit selection oftentimes shifts a weight from fewer organic options there are a lot of others that aren't listed as organic or at least does and so that is does seem to be a hole that I've seen too for the number of years for that of the fruit in particular yeah I think that is missing however it's a
007lot more difficult to grow organic fruit yeah definitely almost impossible to do in Michigan it can be done but you're not gonna have a you know product the organic things kind of a funny thing because the same people that ask if something's organic are the same people who pick up a IRRI corn and there's one worm in the tip of it that could easily just be pulled out and it's completely edible and they're like oh just draw it on the table and freak out so we see a lot of that too I think this is getting out what do people actually want and I wonder if the farms that are putting up the you know like no spray on the blueberries and things like that how people are reacting to that also which that might
008be customer education all right yeah we had I think before talked about a more standardized labeling system that people could either ask to see or access online so like there are just you know there are several ways to say organic for like organic but some you know the same thing that means kind of the same thing or I mean I guess that still just really refers to the organic and doesn't really address the other things but can farmers display I can't remember what the acronym is but the environmentally friendly practices is there any way for them to display that at the market yeah yeah I mean their own booth is their own - I mean except for if you're not certified organic we ask that you don't use the word organic you have to be
009certified but yeah beyond that and the same thing I've heard about meat and practices for raising heat and easier or more consistent system so I can think about ways to communicate that better does it get to what you were suggesting with Lisa with the customer education that it's really about the under the labeling that's being applied I think some of its about the labeling but there are there are so many people in town that are using organic practices but not certified organic - and you know I also know that that was some of the meat that it's been hard to find butcher right that you need a special type of wood to do the organic butchering so that I also wonder if it's a lot of it's just customer education - yeah and people can
010go to Argos and get organic apples from Michigan so they want them unfortunately one of our vendors who was doing beef organically decided not to because butcher was the hard to find um does anyone have any immediate reactions to the artisan the question of you know people said that that's something they'd like to see more of but we have the Commission you know had decided you know we want to keep the cap on it because of the whole seniority issue I'm not I mean so 10 people all said that yes so and so in the context it's the second most frequently requested but if you look at what people say they're buying the you know that the number of people so 120 plus people are buying vegetables if it were a hundred and a hundred
011people said that they'd like to see more artisans I think then I'd feel differently about the makeup but it does seem like what people are coming to the market to purchase is fairly reflective of the makeup of the vendors and so I I don't know I don't feel I don't feel any differently based on this data yeah I agree and I guess if this comes up again maybe asking people what type of artisans they'd like to see yeah I think you're right I mean this was a pretty small survey so it doesn't necessarily I don't think we should make any large changes based just off of this I mean it might mean we want to explore that question further and again I think asking customers what type of artisans mm-hmm might be interesting that's because
012you've got a lot of talk to other people yeah a few ceramics folks I mean technically people could be referring to like the Gracias who bring the fall crafts so I mean it's kind of a gray area it might be saying yeah we'd like to see more of those Thanksgiving centerpieces or the Christmas stuff they might be falling that under the category of crafts that's yeah let's go it'd be a tricky area and I kind of you know mm-hmm yeah no I think that's a good point um and then I also think it's interesting to look at you know the first question what will you buy at the market today and then what the current vendor mix is so it we we do have you know artisans is is pretty high in terms of how
013many people bring artisan products versus are people buying artisan products when they come to the market that's a much lower number again vegetables are the highest for both of those categories so it looks like we're that's good but you know some other things I think like fruit a lot of people are buying fruit and we don't have a whole lot of vendors bringing fruit although the vendors we do have a bringing fruit or bringing it consistently and a lot of it I will say so that's good at least in baked goods again a lot of people are buying it baked goods but we don't have a ton of big good vendors so that might be something we think of adding morale when the products you'd like to see more of there one of the things
014that the top one's ready to eat food which I don't is that hot and ready to eat food or is that baked goods it seems like that like hot if it's phrased as ready-to-eat food if I bought a cookie that's also yeah that's a good question I think we might have phrases like hot ready B's because if so then that one's one that really stands out too in terms of as there are very few of those vendors although is entering that not many people reported actually buying a lot of demand but not a lot of produce well the other thing is I mean the question is what will you buy at the farmers market today right and I feel like hot ready-to-eat food is some there's there are things here that are you come to
015the market to purchase and that's a different question than then what did you buy because you got hungry while you were here or whatever so you know I think that there is a difference between what will you buy and what did you actually buy and so you might come in thinking here to buy fruit and realize Oh actually there aren't any more blueberries starting this week so I'm not you know so I think there's what what will you buy at the farmers market today to me almost seems like more of the what do you come here what you come to the market seeking which is not exactly the same as so then what did you buy so you might not think I'm gonna buy a bunch of croissants and you had the pizza truck there
016several weekends and how did they feel that their sales were since that is clearly ready to eat hot food I think the vendors that do bring the ready the hot food have done well yeah so we can continue to look the challenge we have with those is if it's truck they don't always fit so we look for ones like pillars that can do a tent set up and there aren't as many of those oh that's just something with our Tiny's base we have to nail it this is really um interesting and helpful information to see though so thank you for sharing I guess one other question with that two of the other thing that people want to see more of us the craft beer in Kabuto is one thing we have we don't write there's
017no one doing any of that we know there has been a request there have been requests in the past and there's been one more recently to bring that type of item um an alcoholic beverage and you know in Michigan you can bring like you have wine sales or cider sales or Mead sales that markets not beer don't butt in do samples it's more difficult we have to figure out the process with their legal department at the city and also coordinate with the Sheriff's Office mm-hm so we're kind of working on setting become more of a template before when we do get those requests I know some other farmers markets nearby like Westside farmers market has a wine vendor it's been pretty well-received it's a bit of a challenge but I think once we do one
018and it sort of moved away not that we want a lot of church but that's I think the big barrier is that it's a lot of paperwork what seems like a reasonable amount of demand for something we have zero of something hi Phil everyone this is Helen Chandler I know hi helen perris I didn't have her - do you want to introduce yourself we got me to introduce myself Joe I was talking to Michael I don't want to but I will I am Helen Chandler I own and operate like divine farm with my husband Jim and we've been at the market for all of our years in existence heading in to year four we're really I'm really glad to be on working on this stuff with you guys because I am very invested and making
019them like it great with you glad you're here yeah sorry I was late you have the longest drive I think all right I don't think we've met I'm Holly so it's nice to meet you too so yeah hell until we have then I think one thing we're talking about today is something we've kind of been discussing for a couple of months now so like we can give you a little summary of how we got to where we are but you know it's gonna be um sort of something that's ongoing with I think that's next actually but um the survey in the packet that's new and feel free to browse it I included the full survey at the end ok so if we're done with the survey analysis we should move on to a producer only
020guideline recommendations these are in the packets so these we sent out to vendors and again we think something we want to decide is it's always hard to get feedback on things as we've found and this is something that we think maybe needs a extra polish that we really want to get it out there and hear what people think or you know if we're happy enough with it you know maybe there's a way we can have like a trial period try it out see how it actually works in real time like when our inspector is doing these things and and kind of analyze it that way which I think we'll have to do either way but thank you working microphone so I think I was this is more like a kind of a recap maybe of
021what we have in place and then the comments that have come so um yeah so these guidelines we put together to be used by both the inspector when she does remark her visits and the manager when considering new vendors and they are for all types of products to better clarify what it means when we see producer only um so we put together a grower vendor checklist of things that aren't required practice but suggested so the idea is like hopefully they would do most of these things with details have responsibility the owner the employees do the planting do the irrigation do the harvest and then we did we wrote some requirements as well so those were suggestions hopefully the vendor is doing most of those things with the understanding that sometimes that is contracted out and
022then the things that we'd like to see everyone doing the vendor is active in more than 50% of the time it takes to get the product to the market the owner employees perform post-harvest handling and packing the owner actively manages the day-to-day three or more of that list we had applies and then we did try to define an employee versus a private contractor doing those things because we felt it would be fine if the employee was doing those things but not to have an outside private contractor doing those things and then the main vendor on the application with the market that is benefiting from the sales is the direct employee or owner of the business so again so they're just not like going out and buying it from someone reselling it and they're the one
023profiting honey was our first one we besides the grower checklist honey we said do a minimum so the person would at least have to perform the majority of hive checks and week-to-week management of the bees including my treatments and then the active in 50% or more by the time it takes to get the product from five no market and then preferably they do they were an instruction they do their own bottling they manage the land around the hives but that was not required our inspector Jian commented that it would be instead of saying you have to be involved 50 percent or more of the time because that's really hard to measure you can say like hey how much time you spend on this okay instead we could list the activities that go with beekeeping and
024do something like we did the grower checklist and like as long as they do a certain number then we're happy instead of like a percentage of time what do people think about that suggestion I think that's definitely easier to enforce yeah I agree I think we would have to consult with our honey vendors about what that list might contain and then my other concern though is also like some of the like one of the things might take 90% of your time and the others might take like 10% of your time but if we did you know you have to do two out of three figure out so correct me if I'm wrong but when the honey vendors were here one of the things that they were saying that they felt was really important was that
025weekly maintenance of the hives that that that was a real critical part of being a honey producer mm-hmm so maybe that is some mandatory yeah and I think that's what we met when we said the hijacks and we tweak management I also did consult with a few honey vendors that aren't at the Ann Arbor farmers market because we had the question of you know how much work and time does it take to do your own bottling and extracting is it common for honey beekeepers to contact this out and they had said that they had found it was common practice depending on the amount of honey you need to it's like bottle to actually have someone else do it just because it does require that specialized equipment then can be expensive and there are people in
026companies that will do that for you so it's common practice and also a smaller part of like what the overall management of the hives takes so that was sort of some feedback I'd received from other beekeepers that I thought helped answer I think one of the questions we had I liked that the inspector also added the setup and moving of the hives since some honey producers are moving their hives around that I think that might be an important thing to add to the challenge checklists well I mean it sounds like it makes sense to consult with some beekeepers and get a list of all the activities involved and then maybe an estimate of which ones take up a lot of time versus okay maple syrup I mean there's not a whole lot here until we
027get to so the plants in the seedlings we did sort of have a comment about that one um and it's interesting plantain seedlings kind of go with the grower checklist but we have it in two separate places it's a little bit of a different thing so the plants in the seedlings we said that we recognize it's common practice for Thunders to purchase seedlings from an outside source raised them and sell them at market there are different lifespans annual perennial so we said two can be considered produced by a vendor the Commission recommended a plant being in the care and possession of a vendor for at least three weeks for annuals in six weeks for perennials it's commonly got back for that was yes in some cases but so many plants are so different so in
028some case having a plant for six weeks is barely enough for it to really get to a place it needs to be for sale and they could be buying yes they could be buying the plugs and then six weeks from that and they'd have to go out and maybe buy the finished result and sell that so their point I think was allowing a vendor to purchase a pot or basket prefinished he called it prefinished and just allowing them to hold it for three to six weeks opens up a door to fraud so his suggestion was to ask for receipts for all of the all of the items it takes to raise that plant [Applause] yes so one to provide proof of purchase of the needed materials and if they had to do that then it
029would be less likely that they would also go out and buy it since they already for sure okay not trying to be difficult here but that whole thing right there about showing your seats for purchasing things we grow a lot of potted plants and you could come out to my place right now we could go right now and I could show you pallets and pallets and pallets of pots flats all kinds of materials that we're gonna be planning in in the spring and I didn't pay for any of them this is all stuff that's being recycled mm-hmm I haven't bought a pot and probably five years mm-hmm you know I'll run across somebody who'll say hey I got you know another farmer he'll say hey I got two pallets and it's Florence training pots do
030you want them well yeah I'm gonna take them and that stuff's expensive so I mean there's gonna be a lot I think there's gonna be a lot of cases like that and the whole a bedding plant deal is a it's it's a dying industry it's hard to make any money with Home Depot and Lowe's all that stuff's coming down out of oil and further south and they're all government subsidized farms bringing that stuff up here and it's almost impossible to make any money grow them flowers right now so by getting pots and stuff like that for free is one way to kind of get an edge on the whole thing so I would agree with what they're saying but the receipt thing yeah that doesn't mean maybe when she comes out she needs to look
031mm-hm and if someone can say I don't have any receipts but look over there and take it over there and show her you got pallets of pots and stuff well then obviously you're doing it you know so I'm you know I don't know if to keep going back to paperwork I mean I don't know about everyone else but there's a reason why I like being a farmer that shows his path and one of them was I didn't like school and I didn't like paperwork and I didn't like all that stuff and I do my fair share of it a lot more than I thought is gonna have to so you know it's not always necessarily gonna be plausible to show her receipt for everything but to show proof of it might be just as good
032that's a really good suggestion so I think another so the question becomes you know like what's the easiest way to towel you know and I think another suggestion he had was more do inspections more often and do him twice a year so in the spring and then in the mid summer because you know you have your start basically like two times when you have your starts you have them in the spring and then that is the stuff you're bringing to market in the beginning and then you kind of have your fall plantings and then so if they don't have any starts in August they're not gonna have stuff for the fall so another thing we could do would be either to do inspections more often or to bury the timing so the first time the
033inspector goes legal in the spring the second time the inspector goes they go in the summer so it's still every other year but they're she's you know changing the time of year she got was she kind of does that now I feel like a little bit wise yeah so which is a good idea I like that and then I think a final thing is just looking you know what is the amount the vendor has at the farm or whatever it is they have the product versus how much are they bringing to market I think we've found that's just really challenging that piece because you you mean actually it's looking at that yeah I mean if it was like really off you know if they had a couple flats of one thing and they were bringing
034a ton of it to market it would be yes but yeah it's not and it requires a lot of extra oversight thumb-mark get to which we don't necessarily have the time for so yeah you know it it is challenging I think some things where you need to worry about is you know how involved does the market should the market really be in this versus how hands-off should we be um and you know how are we doing this for all the vendors like is it you know if we start doing this fair should we be doing it for everyone are we just doing it if we have a suspicion and then that gets tricky here I think though the feedback that I was getting was the inspections we do need to tighten up the process a
035little bit there's the worry that things could at least if someone wanted to they could easily is everyone inspected once per year right now every other year every other year okay so maybe if there is the possibility of being randomly inspected that I mean I think that might be something to consider if not only the possibility but if then there are actual random inspections that are happening on top of the baseline amount and then when they're going out there looking for and documenting you know the sort of proof of growing activity that Jeff was talking about whether it's receipts or the actual materials themselves on-site yeah that's that's a good idea what the materials if we're not asking for receipts we can at least see that it's there and sort of take it not inventory
036in terms of per item but get a sense and document a sense of what quantities there so she does that a little bit but I think it could be a larger part of the inspection yeah all right well any other thoughts before we move on okay I have some edits to make so you know maybe I can edit this push it out to the vendors one more time and then I think it I mean I feel like we just kind of need to see how it works in in real time like have a have a trial period where it's more like feedback based from our inspector you know from our vendors than it is anything else okay so then we move on to a new business but there is no new business so we'll move
037to reports oh um I included the report we got from Xero a /na of our food truck rally we required trucks be zero waste this year and we didn't achieve 100% still but we did do a lot better than we did last year we did a 79 percent diversion rate so 79 percent of the waste from our food truck rallies was either recyclable compostable or yeah recyclable or compostable yeah so we'll continue to work with them to make it even better and then I included the the total dot survey for you guys that just had all of the questions we asked I love the dogs are okay that's a gun diversion so you know when you look it over yeah I guess next meeting or whatever if you have any thoughts about questions we can't
038ask for next year that we didn't ask let me know or if anything jumps out at you because we try to do these every year and then finally the market manager report okay infrastructure update so we had we've been we've been gathering data for you so it was soon soon we should have something we did an analysis of the foundation of the current structure it will not support sidewalls but our our guys have come up with what could possibly be a kind of simple solution just to kind of strengthen the existing structure to the point that it would support sidewalls so they're going to do some renderings and come up with some final numbers and then I should have like a rendering to present to you guys and then and maybe some estimated cost numbers
039as well then we also did an estimated costs for what it would be to just take down that whole mean that the main aisle and rebuild it similar to what it looks like now but just you know built as we want it so it could hold sidewalls if we wanted to put those in so that cost we got the cost of if we want to install the radiant heating along the main aisle and we've met with solar to look at wood installing solar panels on the roof be enough to power the radiant heating in the winter which they think they could do it so and then of course there's always the the old building plan that I think we need to keep in mind so what I would love to have you know for you
040this spring is these fleshed out a little bit several options and then after PMAC kind of takes a look I think you know we need public input and one of the several options be the and the building though the old plan yeah I think didn't we talked about needing a new quote for that I think or that maybe not needing a new quote but the quote was there was something about the current amount that was quoted for those building that was not I felt it was not accurate or it wasn't updated is that right I don't recall okay but do you feel like we have a real solid estimate of what the building would cost I've been getting just so much just month-to-month even it's probably different but I don't imagine it would be too
041much out of the range of what it was quoted for or like significantly less you know what 13 for last time was that it we got it quoted then it was recoded and it came out like 30% higher the second time was recoded so and you know they have to when it we got to recoated it came out like 30% higher so I don't know I I would guess probably based on how things are going now it might even be even more unless there's big slump but things are still going pretty gangbusters yeah for now we bought though it's like propane and patio heaters with the mushroom caps and they seem to have been a hit you know it's at least it's something takes a bit warm instead of nothing so yeah those sort of
042customer warming stations yeah so that's those I think are the the options we had talked about as committee we wanted to really like focus on and see if they worked for us unless I'm am I missing an e is there anything you would like to see that was not in that list that I could bring in the spring so basically but we'll see if estimates for the ability to add rolled on sidewalls the ability to add overhead heating just on the main aisle the ability to rebuild the shed on the main aisle and then the old building good question so back when Sarah was manager we had the plans and the budget and everything put for the building in the sanba so this was you know basically for winterizing it had sides that could close
043in the winter and open in the summer and instead of the sandlot being there it would be a building and it did not get built because the original cost estimate to build it was lower and then we when we've got the final cost estimate it was so much higher than what we expected thank you okay that was the longest update um the food realities had that the 79 percent diversion rate food gatherers received roughly 20,000 pounds of food from us this year compared to a thirty four thousand three hundred last year so it's down a little bit wick and project fresh programs are done we did more in both of those programs this year so we redeemed about 5300 this year and 4500 that's here in senior project fish the funds from the dinner in
044September we'll finally we'll be available very soon our timeline is December slow food here on Valley is going to make mini grants available to our farmers well any farmer in the area up to $500 to basically it's pretty open it would be to just add something to your farm that farmers markets are kind of lacking right now so that's exciting and so few to her here on valleys gonna administer that sweet hand valley and you'll take applications or they're gonna do all of it they are gonna do it all okay December we are not meeting and in January we will have to select new terracing and co-chairs but 2020 and we've invited the hump growers to come present so the idea is hum business new product we need to figure out how we want to
045incorporate it into our market so they will be telling us about their products and about the rules and regulations we should be looking for the licensing we should be looking for I kind of think lights are up wreaths will be up soon and the schedule for the holidays so we go through Christmas on Wednesdays and then we go down to once a week in January and we have a holiday market on December 14th so should come out it'll be fun and that is all I have okay does that leave us so we're onto I think second public comment not limited to agenda items so are you are you here to make a comment yep can you state your name JJ mo I own hey honey I was on the vendor committee for the rework of
046the building and if that is something you look at again if I recall the reason why the 30% jumped the Sarah opened it up to the vendors to expand the width of the building because of parking concerns parking was a big agenda item that we went round and round about for a couple of months and moving people some of the bigger farmers who have trucks are pretty drastically affected and if they're moved out of alignment they get pretty upset about it I don't recall if there was a problem with the original size I think there was maybe one or two farmers that had trucks that didn't want to change their position if I recall that was it was an issue but even before Sarah the the rumors I heard were that the sidewall project was
047pretty popular I don't I don't know I didn't really see the costs on it but I don't remember the building held having a lot of popularity specifically because of how it would impact parking thank you great thank you okay if there are no more public comments then we can move to adjournment I'll need a motion to adjourn motion to 'train second 6:25 thank you thank you you