Many vendors are staying away from the Thursday markets at Rainy Lake Square because of an insurance requirement.
They had been told to sell their wares they need a business license and two million dollars in liability insurance.
The licensing issue was resolved when the Fort Frances Downtown Business Improvement Association stepped in and acquired a licence to cover all vendors using the square.
According to the town, this was a practice followed in the past.
However, the insurance requirement remains in place.
Interim Chief Administrative Officer Travis Rob says it wasn’t that anything changed.
“It’s not something that necessarily changed. It’s something that became apparent to us,” says Rob. “We got questioned by our insurance provider about how we ensure that the vendors coming to the market square have liability coverage. We had given them the documentation that we collect from our vendors, and they said, well, this doesn’t satisfy your requirement to make sure that they have liability insurance coverage. We started diving into it a bit deeper and started to ask questions, and that’s where it became very apparent that we aren’t doing enough to make sure that these vendors are covered for their protection.”
Rob says they are now trying to find something that will work for vendors at a reasonable cost.
He says they have been talking with several different insurance providers to see if there is a policy or some sort of coverage available to the town that can be passed on to the vendors or to a cooperative that could be formed.
“We’re trying to finalize some things right now, but there are some competing factors that we’re trying to work through. We’re trying to find something that’s going to work for the most number of vendors at the most reasonable cost. It’s not a quick and easy sort of solution to come through, but we do have some things. We’re very close to having some resolution to this,” says Rob.
