Hamilton’s Farmers Market is the first City of Hamilton division to publicly announce its 2025 budget request.
The Market is seeking $378,268 from the municipal tax levy for 2025, up 14 percent from its 2024 allotment of $331,903.
Security, costs. and utility costs are significant factors driving the budget increase.
The Market plans to continue a rent freeze for its vendors, citing continued lower customer traffic since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. (The recent post-COVID record set on November 2 was still below regular pre-COVID customer visits.)
The Market expects to collect $508,236 in rent and $50,000 in utility recovery fees from vendors. The Market expects to collect $12,500 in temporary rental fees from pop-up vendors and sell $7,500 in merchandise (mugs and t-shirts).
Spending in 2025 includes $453,818 in salary and benefits, $30,000 on marketing and promotional activities, $35,000 for events, $25,000 for security services (provided by the Hamilton Library), and $35,000 to provide one-hour free parking for customers.
The budget will be presented to City Council in January.
Production Details v. 1.0.0 Published: November 17, 2024 Last updated: November 17, 2024 Author: Joey Coleman Update Record v. 1.0.0 original version
How many employees at the Farmers Market make up that $453k salaries cost? That seems EXTREMELY HIGH if you could please break it down for me. Thank you.
Also, how much of that $35k for FREE PARKING actually gets used? I’d be interested to see previous years since that has been put into place and how many people are using it to shop “elsewhere” yet are not actually using the Farmers Market, how is this tracked? Thank you.