Memo lists reasons for non-renewal of park cafe

The Polson city manager and director of parks and recreation have supplied a memorandum to city commissioners in response to a local eatery that is facing non-renewal.

Dated Jan. 23, Director of Parks and Recreation Pat Nowlen sent the seven-page memo to commissioners, outlining a list of reasons how the decision for non-renewal of the Boardwalk Outdoor Café in Boettcher Park was made.

Currently, Tiecha Broussard, who has owned the building and its contents since 2013, operates the establishment.

City Manager Mark Shrives stated by email that there isn’t any one reason more important than the other for the non-renewal.

The decision, he said, “was an operations decision.”

Part of the lease agreement over time has stipulated that owners of the Boardwalk Outdoor Café would perform upkeep on the surrounding area of the business, but hours of the service from the eatery have been cut in half.

“Through the years, and I don’t know why, that 220 hours was reduced to 110,” Shrives said.

City officials have begun to look at leases the city holds with other organizations, Shrives said, and through the process “wanted to determine if a fair value was being provided to the City.”

In the case of the Boardwalk Outdoor Café, Shrives said that it hasn’t seemed as though the city has received fair compensation for the free use of public land.

Within the lease agreements between the city and owners of the café, duties have included trash and restroom care in lieu of payment.

In his memo, Nowlen noted that in 2016 he and Shrives began reviewing lease contracts throughout the city, and “we discovered that the lease agreement had many flaws that it was not in compliance with the law or our policies and ordinances.”

Those flaws include the safety of picnic tables, changes to an electrical system that were allegedly made without notifying the city, and the business being for sale at this time.

Broussard previously said she was going to hire a realtor this year to assist with the sale of the business, but was unable to move forward with the process because she wasn’t sure what was going on from the city’s end.

Earlier this month, Broussard spoke on her own behalf during the public comment portion of the City Commissioners meeting, where she said that commissioners didn’t appear to have knowledge of the non-renewal decision.

She also said that the Parks Board also didn’t know about the decision.

Shrives explained that “the Parks Board would never have been involved in this as they are an advisory board to the City Commission and it wasn’t really an issue that they would address.”

He added that he knew commissioners would later receive phone calls once they heard of the decision, which prompted the issuance of the memo on Jan. 23.

“What I did feel obligated to do, as I knew the City Commission would be receiving telephone calls, was to provide them background information in order for them to have the information to respond to their constituents,” he added.

Shrives said that he doesn’t see a reason for the item to be on the agenda for the Commissioners’ Meeting next week, as he is “not sure” which policy commissioners would take vote on, regarding the situation.

Information on the City Commission and other city departments can be found at cityofpolson.com.