One Step Forward, and then...

On Tuesday, Barry went to a zoning meeting. He spent over an hour convincing the 6 member board to issue a variance for our permanent produce market location. The main obstacle was the "open-air" feature. The board was concerned that any change in the zoning would be in place forever---thus, opening the door to all kinds of velvet Elvis sales, etc. should we decide to leave. When the vote was taken, 4 voted for us and 2 against. We were ecstatic.

Two days later, the head of the building department (who was at the zoning meeting and voted FOR our market) called to tell Barry that they had made a "procedural mistake." Even though we were told to go through Zoning, he said we should have presented our proposal to the Planning Commission first. He apologized and was obviously embarrassed to have been selected to be the messenger, but there wasn't much he could do.

Unfortunately, the Planning Commission doesn't meet for another month...pushing things back again...

In the meantime, we've established a couple more contacts with vendors so hopefully that will keep our foot in the produce door for a while longer.