the department of real estate but dph, and that is the fees for something such as selling coffee. i was up there with one of people -- she was dating some things that i was doing. if i was selling coffee, i would have to pay an additional fee apart from what i have to pay to sell pastries and bread. this is with dph, not the department of real estate. i do not know about that. if there is some information that could be passed on to the food vendors, that would be good. some of these things seem sketchy. i would also like the department

of real estate to lend an ear to what the issues are for some of the vendors, even some of the farmers. this meeting was short notice, so i am sure there are others who wanted to say something. mainly concerned with some of the things that i see the need to be addressed. if there are any questions for me, i would be glad to answer. supervisor maxwell: would you be willing to help with the cac? >> indeed. what ever i can help, i have made it known, i am willing to. alemany farmer's market is by far the best farmers market in the city. there are a lot of things in other markets, but in terms of oowhat the people want, what te people feel comfortable with, family issues, those kinds of aspects, i think this is the best in the city. what ever i can do to help in

that cause, i am willing to. supervisor maxwell: what about advertisement? you mentioned the department did some more advertisement. >> if they have done it, i am not aware of it. i will say this. i have noticed the new sign. i was driving one morning and i saw it. i do not know about the advertisement as a whole. supervisor maxwell: they will continue to do more of that, hopefully. do you think that would be helpful? >> yes, anything to remind people that there is a farmer's market on saturday. there are a lot of markets that have cropped up since the inception of alemany. sometimes, we need to be reminded of things. ford motors, they have been around since before we were born, but we still see

advertisements. i do not think it is a good idea to allow it to lay and reminisce. we need to do some advertising and remind the people. thank you. >> my name is body. i provide greek food. i have a concession at the tuesday nighvarious locations. last year, i applied to get one of the spots at alemany. i was here last year complaining

bitterly that my business plan received daa zero. since then, we have done tons of wine and art festivals. we have been invited to the north street festival, union festival. i just want to make you aware that when i resubmit my proposal, i want to give a copy to you for my participation in alameda -- alemany. as a side bar, the health department. yes, they are overburdened, like everyone else, but in the year and a half that i have been in part of the city, no one has come to inspect me, not once. the firemen have been there three times. they were very nice.

as far as the conditions of food vendors at alemany market, deplorable is the way i would characterize it. it is clear when you go through the county's what the standards are for health. you are supposed to have clean water with soap, rinse water, and water to sanitize. i only saw one stall that had those. i only saw one person wearing gloves. of all the festival that we have done, when the health inspectors show up, they shut people down because that is just not the right way to do things. the licenses that people have to take -- you need to take a food safety course. i took it and passed. it is not difficult. basically, you want to treat the public the way you treat your family and friends.

make sure you do not sit in anybody. most of the festival's we have done, a health inspector has been our first customer. many have taken pictures of our set up for trading purposes. i would like to offer my services to the vendors down there to comply with state and county and city regulations. as far as the nutrition programs that we are talking about. in my santa rosa market, we are involved in reaching out to schools, trying to bring slow food to the public. show them that this is what you need to do to be healthy. you need your fruits, vegetables, meats. everything that we do is local, sustainable, and organic. it does not always need to be organic but it should be local and sustainable. that is pretty much our mission statement. supervisor maxwell: thank you very much. is there anyone else who would like to speak?

>> my name is john. i am an organic mushroom farmer. my family has been with the farmers' market -- i have been at the farmers' market all my life. i am just here to thank everybody. the real-estate office as well as your concerns with the farmers' market. just the importance that it is, not only to the city, but to my family. so thank you. supervisor maxwell: ok, let's close public comment. i would like to ask ms. brown to come back up. public comment is closed. >> i fail to address something that you asked me. that was how we went about using

the competitive rfp process. because there were not specific requirements the way there are in 9a for the farmers' stalls, we opted to do it under chapter 23 which encourages a competitive process, competitive selection for agreements on permitting city property. we went with that type of process to put out requests for proposals, rank them according to the criteria that the budget analyst highlighted for you, and with respect to whether one vendor is paying more to one next to them, we determined it was better to allow the market to determine that both because of chapter 23's encouragement of that as a policy, but also, in our view, we wanted to have a robust offering their.

we realize someone who sells cups of coffee will not make as much as someone who sells enchiladas or some of the more robust -- some people are buying lunch there, taking things home with them in greater quantity. but we want to make sure that a coffee vendor, somebody who sold patrice -- pastries, could also be there. we decided to let them tell us what's they thought they could pay based on what they anticipated their business would make, basically allow the market to set those fees. if it is the direction of the board, we are happy to consider a flat rate. i would suggest that we may want to consider different tiers for different types of offenders, as i suggested.

-- vendors, as i suggested. we have had a few vendors decide they cannot do business there and they left. we do not necessarily think that is a bad thing. we still have a robust offering their. --- there. we did not move to replace those who left because we still felt like we had a robust offering. we did not feel like we needed to rush out and get more people there. i have one more point. that is with respect to the use of the stalls in the winter

months. please correct me if i am wrong, but i believe one of the things we have been told from an enforcement perspective, that we have to separate the non- certified farmers selling their products from the certified farmers'. . that is part of why we located the food and beverage vendors to where they are now. i do not know if we could do that without some additional break between them and the farmers. supervisor maxwell: so certified farmers' have to be segregated from the food vendors? >> and any other type of vendor. >> in the market rules, there has to be a boundary between certified agricultural and non- certified products. that is why it needs to be

separated. supervisor maxwell: what if you are not a farmer? what if you are selling popcorn? >> yes, that is a non-certified product, so it is separated from the agricultural part of the market. you may be able to address that in the rules somehow -- i understood the gentleman to say that if it is raining in the winter, you could use astall. this is in the certified agricultural part of the market, you cannot do that. supervisor maxwell: but if it is not, you could. ok. khnum so what we need to do is figure out if those are certified vendor -- ok, so what

we need to do is figure out if those certified vonendors are coming. >> [unintelligible] supervisor maxwell: it might be confusing for them while -- >> that is what i mean. once we set it up, it would be difficult to change [inaudible] they would be out of compliance if they allowed a non-certified to go into a certified part. supervisor maxwell: but if you have an idea of who you serve, who is certified and who is not, perhaps you could already

have that boundary. sometimes the other people do not come who are not certified. are all the agricultural products certified? that means, anybody who's sells agricultural product -- who sells agricultural product in our market is certified. >> in the certified markets. supervisor maxwell: so since ours is that, all are certified. thank you. >> we had actual beencited for that, -- been cited for that, having non-food vendors next to certified stalls. because we use of fixed stalls,

it would have taken a lot of stalls out of use in order to achieve that required separation. that is why we cannot do that on the spot. i understand, i am sympathetic. i know the wind can be challenging, but our understanding, it is a state requirement. because we had been cited earlier, we are vigilant on making sure that we comply with it. supervisor maxwell: i have another question for you be. regarding fees, you have access to what is going on in the market. some of the markets that are mentioned in the report have flat fees, from my

understanding, and they managed to do ok. my concern is, do all the coffee vendors pay the same amount? is there a staggered fee in the folks that sell pastries and coffee? >> i am sure there is not. we allow the markets to determine that. we took their bids. what they thought they could pay, to be the fees that they paid. we did not do any standardization. supervisor maxwell: and you based that on what you all thought was best. is that what is happening in other markets, is that just what

san francisco does? >> we work closely with the rec and park department in many of their offerings. this is a constant challenge, rate setting. i think we share the velocity of allowing the market to speak. the intent was to create a market floor that we thought was reasonable, and then individual vendors could decide, i could bit more than that because this is my anticipated share of the market. it was always set as a floor. i think maybe what the director is getting at is maybe there is a possibility for a tiered system that would recognize the difference of what they are selling, the likely profit margins they may have. i think we can move to that

system in 2011 in our next bid call. supervisor maxwell: i guess you will discuss it with your cac. >> that is right. i would also like to state court made it with rec and parks. it can be confusing for vendors who go to the market but are also tried to get opportunities where rec/park is offering them. supervisor maxwell: through the chair -- when of the dominaone n -- with a black care -- when you are going from market to market, are you finding that ours is set up in any way like other ones in other cities?

>> no, it is actually confusing and pretty different. there are two things. there are three tiers of fees. it depends on the size of your stall. you have your farmers who pay the lowest fee. then you have your food vendors who usually [inaudible] everybody pays the samefee per stall. as far as coffee -- the profit margins on food, they are pretty much the same across the board. [no audio] then you should not be in the business. [inaudible] not flexible. there might be rainy day specials in some markets

[inaudible] maybe there is inclement weather. there is a set fee. my bid was $100 [no audio] that begs the question why. supervisor maxwell: there might be the balance of who and what -- i do not want to get into that. >> there is a board that usually meets in each market, and they decide -- [no audio] try to keep a balance between citrus [no audio] do not ruined somebody's livelihood. supervisor maxwell: thank you. i do have a question for you. could you come up?

supervisor mar: could you state your name again? >> john akiens. supervisor maxwell: you mentioned the rainy day, being able to -- understanding that we need to have that separation. one of the issues, when they moved the food vendors, that was huge. do you have a better understanding, is this what you have found to be the case? has someone mentioned this to you before? >> yes, i have an understanding based on what was stated. for example, -- first of all, i did not hear what the space was between the certified and non- certified farmers, food vendors. if it is 20 feet, and the distance of an empty stall is 20

feet, then it seems to me that is the separation, so if there are 10 stalls on the other side that are empty, or if there is only one farmer in those stalls, can that one farmer not be moved closer to the other certified farmers' so you still have the other side available for the food vendors? if we are talking about numbers and you have 12 empty stalls because of the rainy season, and farmers do not come all year round -- so it seems like there could be some accommodation. if that is the case, i do not understand why there cannot be an accommodation. supervisor maxwell: how soon in advance how do you have to notify people that you are going to be there, not going to be there? >> in terms of the food vendors not showing up, if you are not going to be there that day, the protocol is to call that

morning and leave a message on the machine, or if you can get a hold of someone in the office. supervisor maxwell: so it is basically within 12 hours or less. >> as i said, the thing that concerns me in raising this question is, when you look at the rainy season, there are quite a few empty stalls. many farmers do not come during that time. i am still not sure what that space will be. supervisor maxwell: i will ask. thank you. yes? >> supervisors, if i may comment for clarification purposes. when you speak about distances between the agricultural certified market portion and non-certified, those boundaries are drawn up and submitted for

the certificate, when they apply for renewal. supervisor maxwell: submitted when who applies? the market? >> yes. when alemany applied for their renewal, they submit a boundary. in the case of alemany, i have not looked at that map. i am sorry, i cannot tell you what the boundaries are. but there is a boundary that identifies agricultural certified and non-certified. supervisor maxwell: thank you. ms. brown? yes, another question. have you looked at the boundary lately, has it changed -- >> if i may. i think we have relatively

simple solution. in our next some middle for application, that we provide a seasonal boundaries so that we have a winter season and summer season boundary. that would give us the flexibility to assign certain spaces for non-certified uses when we know we are going to have those vacancies, so we can be in compliance. we can work with the agricultural commissioner. i think there is a solution we can work to worward. supervisor maxwell: ok, thank you. i would like to continue this. i want to ask our real estate department -- i want to have day a check-in -- hopefully, they have a number of items that they would like to have completed or are working to complete by december 31.

i would ask that maybe the meeting before, if they could come back in and check in with us to let us know where you are. we will have a talk. i will meet with ed lee and ed harrison on the parcels that you are talking about that could help us with parking. supervisor mar: i just want to thank ms. brown and mr. updike for being here, also a time line for setting up the cac. i feel strongly committed the- based people should be at on that committee in addition to small farmers. i know the history of the farmer's market is a grass-roots effort. it is challenging for us to have a people's farmers market. also for small farmers to have a chance versus the big grocery industry, who was opposing this. i hope that comes from the cac

and this remains the people's farmers market. supervisor maxwell: in discussing the cac, they plan to have farmers and people who live around the area, maybe beyond. it needs to be bigger than nine. this is a huge city, historical place, people really love and are dedicated to farmers' markets. it will probably be bigger than what we talked about. we definitely need people who live around, maybe beyond. thank you very much. we will talk again at our continued meeting. supervisor mar: we are continuing this item until -- what was the date? to the call of the chair. we will make sure it happens. ms. stokes are there any other

items before us? supervisor mar: with no other item before us, the meeting is adjourned. thank you.

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