Weekend flea market expansion, fees face further council scrutiny

Work session discussion indicated September 25 as a target date for a new public hearing on changes to Front Royal’s code on flea market operations. Re-advertisement is required because council will be seeking a higher $500 annual fee than was advertised for the Aug. 14 public hearing after which a vote failed to materialize. Photos/Roger Bianchini

Discussion of the aborted vote on a request to expand the weekend days flea markets in Front Royal are allowed to operate indicated a changed consensus on an annual fee structure.  The fee advertised for public hearing on August 14 was $250.  However, John Connolly’s motion to approve the new fee structure and allow Fridays to be added to Saturday and Sundays for weekend days of operation died without a second.

At an August 21 work session, a majority came down in favor of a $500 annual fee.  Only newly-appointed councilman Gary Gillislee said he was okay with leaving it at $250.  Vice-Mayor Eugene Tewalt, Jacob Meza, Chris Morrison and William Sealock all appeared to now favor the $500 fee.  And while Connolly didn’t dissent, he appeared less enthusiastic about the hike.

In fact, it was Connolly who was the staunchest supporter of facilitating any changes as soon as possible and not to hold the flea market operator or vendors responsible for a now six-year lapse in the Town’s collection a daily one dollar per vendor table fee.  Connolly pointed out the town government  has been encouraging businesses – particularly from a tourism point of view – to stay open more days a week, while flea markets are currently “prohibited by law to operate more days.”

He also called any attempt to collect what was estimated to be $20,000 or more in lost revenue due to the failure to collect the daily table fee over the past six years “really sticking it to the little guys.”

However, Jacob Meza countered that it was council’s responsibility to collect back fees; to which Connolly retorted “but the fault was ours.”

By the end of a lengthy discussion Sealock agreed with Connolly, stating, “My opinion is we’re at fault – our staff failed (to collect the money) – I agree with John not to punish the little guy.”

While the Town has not been able to pin down the reason the table fees stopped getting collected, staff noted that one of the proprietor’s relatives believes that discussion of the billing structure in 2011 led to a legal opinion accepted by the Town that the fee wasn’t legal as structured.  Information from an earlier work session indicated that currently vendors pay a $10 annual fee, a considerable discount on a dollar a day of operations if the estimate of 200 days of flea market operations per year is accurate.

Discussion of the amount of an annual fee led to the question of whether the table fee would also be re-implemented.  Mayor Hollis Tharpe wondered if the combination of a peddler’s license fee on vendors, an annual fee and daily table fee might not amount to “triple taxation”.

That discussion led to another question – why hadn’t the dollar a day, table fee been re-implemented once the lapse was discovered during the current code discussion?  Town Manager Joe Waltz replied that when the discussion began about the request to add Fridays with a new fee structure, he anticipated a fairly quick resolution including imposition of a new fee structure.

Vice-Mayor Tewalt initially suggested the dollar a table fee be reinstituted immediately.  When the mayor worried that would entail staff overtime monitoring that the table count and fees were being accurately reported, Tewalt replied, “You’ve got to allow people a chance to be honest.”  The vice mayor said he believed the fee system would be voluntarily observed by the flea market proprietor and vendors and that staff monitoring on overtime would be a “waste of taxpayer money.”

However, as the conversation progressed it appeared immediate re-implementation of the daily table fee was abandoned.  Tewalt asked if council could instruct the town manager not to enforce the fee if the town code currently reflected such a billing method.  Town Attorney Napier replied that legally the best course of action would simply be to notify staff that council didn’t care if the code wasn’t enforced until a permanent course of action was decided upon.

As we pointed out in our story on the August 14 public hearing, the failure to reach a vote that was facing failure may have worked to the applicant’s benefit in not putting any restrictions on when the matter may be brought back before council.  However, during the August 21 work session Town Attorney Doug Napier did explain that if a higher fee structure is proposed than was originally presented for a vote, a new public hearing will have to be re-advertised.

Queried on achievable time frames, Town Manager Waltz said the second of council’s September meetings on the 25^th seemed more likely than September 11.

Authorization to advertise for a new public hearing on changes to the existing flea market codes was NOT on the agenda of the August 28 council meeting.  So September 11 is definitely off the table; but is September 25 still the target date for that new public hearing?

Your guess is as good as mine …