You say that the benefitting "farmers" do not pay for the use of Splashpad Park. Is this fair to their competitors?
You say that the "rationale" is it helps "local growers" and provides "fresh, nutritious produce" to residents. What local growers? Is the produce fresher and more nutritious than what can be bought at lower cost at Trader Joes or even at supermarkets? Is it organic? The only thing about the F.M. produce that stands out is its high price.
You imply that by attracting "pedestrians" (95% of whom access the Market by car from the looks of it) the Market helps nearby businesses. That claim is false...as you know.
You correctly reference the significant losses sustained by nearby business because of the loss of parking. Yet your "solution" would do absolutley nothing to alleviate the problem, as you yourself acknowledge when you say: "parking for customers will, however, remain problematic".
You say that the encroachment permit will require the Market to clean up after itself. We should hope so!
Your defense of the Farmer's Market is much weaker than expected. Is there some hidden benefit we have missed?
Instead of a Trader Joes, which would have been a legitimate business paying normal property and gross receipts taxes, the city is saddled with another public giveaway to a favored group of business people who pay no rent, no property taxes and no business taxes, and whose sole responsibility seems to be cleaning up after themselves and minimizing the damage caused by operations.
This is not surprising. This is, afterall, Oakland. Oaklander have come to expect that their city government will be suckered into one dumb giveaway scheme after another. You and your City councilperson must be proud. You have "saved" the neighborhood from a Trader Joes and instead sponsored still another "gift of public funds" - which the last time we looked by the way was illegal.
So far we see absolutely no reason whatever why the Splash Pad businesses benefitting from the use of lands belonging to the City of Oakland should not be paying both rent and business taxes. We look forward to receiving a more robust set of reasons for the current arrangement.