Bocce and bleachers in downtown Canton

The Canton Parks and Recreation Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to supply two sets of bleachers for the Italian-American Festival at downtown Market Square, known sometimes by its old name, the Kresge Lot. The festival will be June 21-23.

The festival’s decision to build two permanent bocce courts on Market Square persuaded the board to grant the request. City government, and not the Parks and Recreation Commission, gave permission for the construction.

Commission leadership followed a similar line of reasoning — that is to say, help those who help parks and recreation —  when it voted unanimously in March to once again allow the Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement Festival to use park bleachers for ticketed seating at the festival’s Grand Parade. The previous parks commission indicated that it would not allow free use of the bleachers in 2018. It had two concerns: liability for injury to patrons while the chamber was selling tickets to use the bleachers, and appropriateness of lending public property for a revenue-generating event.

There is no indication that the Italian-American Festival will charge people to sit in the bleachers at its festival.

The previous commission is no longer in office. Member Sam Sliman resigned. Mayor Tom Bernabei declined to reappoint member Andy Black. Subsequently, member Mike Hanke resigned. The mayor appointed John Rinaldi, Maureen Austin and Joseph Gerzina to new terms earlier this year.

The Canton Repository reported in March that Commission President Rinaldi supported use of the bleachers for the parade because the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce had supported the joint parks and recreation levy in 2016.

Though that may be Rinaldi’s view, and the chamber no doubt is grateful for the commission’s decision, it does not reflect any public discussion leading up to the chamber’s 2016 endorsement and $5,000 donation to that levy campaign. At that time, I worked at the chamber and did staff work on such issues. In my time there, I can say that the chamber’s board of directors never discussed a quid-pro-quo approach to a levy endorsement. It would endorse a tax levy because it thought the request was reasonable and in the best interests of the community.

A couple of postscripts: 

1.) The commission never voted on bleachers for the Italian-American Festival in 2017, and so the festival received none. There were only two members of the commission at the May 2017 meeting prior to the festival, and it probably would have been a 1-1 vote, so no vote was taken. One member said he would have voted to lend the bleachers for free because the festival was not going to charge people to sit on them. 

2.) That same member, if the old commission would have survived into this year, would have considered offering the bleachers to the chamber for a small rental fee, thinking that would be more fair to the taxpayers who owned them.