No farmers market in California can boast of as many accolades as have been showered on the one in San Rafael staged every Thursday and Sunday morning by the Marin County Farmers Market Association. The New York Times called it "outstanding," Bon Appetit magazine hailed it as "one of the 10 best" in the nation and Sunset Magazine proclaimed it the "farmers favorite farmers market."

At least some of the farmers at the market apparently take exception with that last commendation. They have formed a group called the Committee to Save Our Market. "The market isn’t healthy" and it "hasn’t been for some time," declared two growers in a letter printed on the committee’s letterhead and sent to association members this spring. The letter contained a litany of allegations of "wrongdoing and mismanagement" by the board of directors and the executive director of the association, which also manages markets in Corte Madera, Fremont and Hayward. (Click here to read the committee's letter.)

Barbara Gonce, one of two growers who wrote that letter earlier this spring, said more than 160 farmers and food and craft vendors, representing more than two-thirds of all associate members, support the committee in its effort to press for reforms in the way the market is managed.

But by the beginning of the summer, some of the farmers who once counted themselves among the supporters of the Committee to Save Our Market said most reform minded farmers at the market have since grown disgusted with the group and its tactics. "That group has lost as far as I can tell 75 percent of the support they had," said Paul Bruins, a farmer from Winters, who signed the committee’s petition several months ago.

Bruins supported the call for an election for members of the board of directors, a goal that will be met with elections to be held in mid July. But the reform group has continued with its protests, led by Don Carney, a political activist who often stations himself at the edge of the market, seeking signatures from customers for a petition calling for changes in the way the market is managed.

Carney said he got involved after requests for help from market employees who claimed they were denied their legal right to overtime pay. That dispute is working its way through the Labor Commissioner’s office. In the meantime, a number of farmers complain that Carney’s tactics threaten to damage the market's good reputation in the community and they accuse him of attempting to "take over" the market.

"We were very happy and proud of the market. There was nothing wrong with it," said Affi Panahi, who has sold produce, salsa and chips at the market for the last nine years. She also signed the petition earlier this year calling for board elections . She said the committee leaders had since "made a fool" of her and other signers by continuing with their protests. She complained that Carney is "destroying the market."

The Marin association is one of the largest and richest in the state with an annual budget of nearly $1 million raised through a yearly membership fee of $50, stall fees and a percentage of gross sales that farmers, and food and craft vendors pay to the association. But critics of the current management say the association’s finances have never been properly audited. Adding to critics concern and anger was a contract that the board attempted to offer Executive Director Lynn Bagley earlier this year. One provision in the proposed contract stated that it was not to be disclosed to anyone other than members of the board. The contract specified that Bagley would receive severance pay of at least $100,000 if a new board was elected and decided to relieve her of her duties.

Beyond the specific allegations of wrongdoing, the critics say the board failed to convene annual meetings of the membership and failed to permit the members to vote for directors, as required by state law. Since the market’s inception in the 1980s, the members of the board have appointed their own successors.

Bruins said he doesn't support the notion of severance pay for the association's executive director and doesn't know of any farmers who do. But he said Bagley, who founded the market 15 years ago, deserves the benefit of the doubt from the board. "You have to have some respect for what she has created," said Bruins, who added that there may well be some legitimate criticisms of Bagley’s management practices. But those issues "need to be dealt with in an unemotional way by the new board," he said. "I would rather see if a new board can work with the current director than jump into bed with Don Carney," said Bruins.

Bagley defended the proposed contract, although she said it was drawn up in the spring during the initial "frenzy and witch hunt" when the committee’s petition was first circulated among association members. The contract has since been canned. But she said severance pay equaling a year-and-a-half salary for her 15 years of work for the association was a reasonable sum. "Certainly if I was fired I would sue and get a lot more money than that, with all the slander that’s been going around," Bagley added.

As for the board’s failure to call annual meetings, Bagley said that when membership meetings were last held in the early 1990s, virtually no one showed up, an observation that farmers confirm. While board meetings have always been open to members of the association, she said it was an "oversight" not to schedule general membership meetings for a period of several years.

The market’s board of directors called for an annual meeting this year after the Committee to Save Our Market was formed to demand changes in the way the market was run. But at the meeting, a tumultuous event held in April, the board refused to entertain a motion from the floor for a vote of no-confidence in the market’s management, prompting virtually all but a dozen of the 175 or so association members in attendance to walk out in protest.

In a letter to association members, Board President John Barbagelata, a San Joaquin County farmer who has been on the board since the 1980s but has apparently never stood for a vote of all the members of the association, dismissed the critics of the current management as "a small group of ambitious and selfish people." (Click here to read Barbagelata's letter.)

But Gonce, an orchid farmer and a leader of the Committee to Save Our Market, said the failure of the board to hold annual meetings was symptomatic of the fact that Barbagelata and Bagley "have been running the market like it is their own private enterprise for years."

Earlier this year, David Sobel, who sells shaved ice at the market, filed a suit against the market management calling for an election in which all dues-paying members, including artisans and food vendors, would be allowed to vote for directors. Gonce, on behalf of the committee, intervened in the suit in support of Sobel’s claims.

In late May, Marin County Superior Court Judge Gary Thomas ruled that the county clerk should oversee an election to be held in July. The judge also awarded voting rights to so-called "community members" of the association, a category that includes some artisans and food vendors, who pay the same fees as farmers. Other artisans at the market who are not members of the association but are required to pay fees have the right to become members in the future, the judge ruled.

Farmers and vendors of food and crafts who participated in the litigation against the market’s current management were disappointed that artisans will be prevented from voting in the upcoming election. Fees paid by craft vendors and food merchants account for nearly half of the association’s revenue, Carney said. "I think the artisans are a wonderful draw. There are some people who might come for the food or the crafts and then will stay and shop at the farmers market," added Gonce. "The more we include all three categories the better."

Gonce and others, however, are still pleased at the prospect that farmers will get a chance to vote for directors, apparently for the first time ever. "The fact that they’re getting an election at all was a victory," said Jared Dreyfus, an attorney in Mill Valley who is representing the committee. "That was not forthcoming from the board" before the lawsuit was filed, Dreyfus said.

Some farmers have a less favorable view of the litigation, however. Gonce’s decision to intervene in the suit on the side of the artisans is one of the reasons why some one-time supporters of the committee have since parted company with the group. "They are getting petitions at the market to ‘support your farmers’ but they are going to court to support the artisans," said Bruins. "My feeling is that the artisans are welcome but the market should be run by farmers and consumers."

Bagley noted that the artisans and food vendors who show up at some point during the course of the year actually outnumber the farmers, though not on any given day, which could contribute to a potentially dangerous trend. "Most farmers markets around the world end up being flee markets," said Bagley, adding that different classes of membership should be devised to assure that farmers continue to control the farmers market.

A total of about 18 candidates will stand for election for the nine seats on the board. The farmers nominated by supporters of the Committee to Save Our Market are Gonce, Rachel Helm, John Frieze, Dennis Durks, Jim Eldon, Barbara Shumskey and Peter Martinelli. The latter two are current board members. Reportedly, some of those on the committee’s slate are no longer supportive of the committee.

But both current and disillusioned supporters of the committee said they hope the current turmoil will pave the way for farmers to have a greater voice in the management of farmers markets throughout the state.

"My feeling is that responsibility for a lot of the current problems lie with everybody who is involved in the market: negligence by the board, complacency by the executive director and total apathy by the farmers," only five or 10 of whom showed up for the last annual meeting in 1993, Bruins said. The current turmoil "is a real big wake up call," he added. "The message to farmers should be to get involved in your market before the problems occur."

To be sure, the turmoil at the Marin market could have the effect of encouraging market managers to set up the organizations in such a way that farmers will have limited input. If the associations that run markets incorporate themselves as non-profit organizations with a self-perpetuating board -- instead of a membership association, as was the case in Marin County -- farmers could be largely shut out of running the markets. That apparently has happened at some markets. The Pacific Coast Farmers Market Association, for example, which runs a number of markets, including the Jack London Square market in Oakland and several markets in San Jose, has a self-perpetuating board whose members can appoint their own successors. One of the directors of that association, which was engaged in a nasty legal battle of its own with a founder of the association, is John Barbagelata.