EVERETT — Lake Stevens will have a new farmers market manager for the first time in six years after the previous director resigned due to frustration with ongoing construction and fees.
On Jan. 7, Sarah Jensen announced on social media that the Lake Stevens Farmers Market will take a break for the 2026 season.
Lake Stevens put out a request for a new manager on Jan. 6 to run the farmers market in 2026 and beyond. The deadline for proposals to take over the role is 4 p.m. Jan. 27.
“We really love the farmers market and all that it does for our downtown,” Mayor Brett Gailey said in an interview.
The market brings in more than $400,000 of additional revenue to the downtown corridor each year, he said.
The new farmers market will need to operate under a different name because Jensen owns the “Lake Stevens Farmers Market” business title and made it clear she has “no interest in continuing any involvement with the City of Lake Stevens,” she wrote in an email.
Jensen works full-time managing markets, she said in an interview. At one point, she directed three — the Stanwood, Lake Stevens and Snohomish farmers markets.
Her contract with Stanwood ended in 2024, so Snohomish is now her only market.
“I will likely do some consulting,” Jensen said. “My hope is that in 2027 I can find a location to bring something back to Lake Stevens under my leadership and organization.”
Jensen lives in Lake Stevens.
“There was a lot of pride to be able to create that for my very own community,” Jensen said. “Then to have it just go off the rails like it did last year, it was really a bummer. It was very emotionally taxing.”
While Parks and Recreation Director Sarah Garceau and Gailey are aware of interested parties, the city has not yet received any submissions for the management position, Garceau said.
“Not even close to being done”
From June to August, the Lake Stevens Farmers Market opened every Wednesday at North Cove Park, 1806 Main St., on the north shore of the lake. The market also utilized The Mill, a large event space within the park.
Construction for North Cove’s redevelopment began in 2019, with The Mill, the lawn, pier, war memorial and beach completed in 2020, just in time for the farmers market to start that year. A second phase of construction was completed in 2021.
While these projects impacted the market, Jensen said, the city’s Main Street renovation, which began construction in January 2025, had the largest effect.
“I was told that, for all intents and purposes, construction would be wrapped up prior to market opening day,” Jensen said. “I arrived opening day — I arrived pretty early in the morning, like 10 a.m. — to get everything set up and it was very much not even close to being done.”
Road closures made it difficult for vendors to load in; some complained about fumes from the construction vehicles, Jensen said.
Early in the season, construction workers would yell at vendors and customers as they tried to enter the park, the market’s manager, Amanda Richardson, said in an interview. She talked with Eric Mangold, the construction project manager, who put a stop to it.
“August was a lot easier to work with the construction crew,” Richardson said. “June and July, no.”
Jensen expressed “concern and genuine exhaustion” about the construction to city officials in an email on July 16.
“We were in agreement that timely and accurate updates regarding construction would be communicated. Unfortunately, we are now seven weeks into our season, and I can’t recall a single week where those updates have been accurate or honored,” she wrote.
In response to the email, Mayor Brett Gailey attempted to speak with her in person but Jensen was not at the farmers market, he wrote at the time.
Jensen was off-site quite often, he said in an interview, which made communication difficult.
“There were some challenges between her and the city,” Gailey said.
Jensen was on-site about five times throughout the season, but needed to be available to her mother, who was diagnosed with cancer last year, she said. She hired Richardson to be there every day.
Jensen requested road construction stop on Wednesdays but was denied, she said. Instead, she requested that construction end when the market started at 3 p.m., and the city obliged.
An email from Garceau on July 24 confirmed “the Mayor did agree to end in-road work immediately in front of North Cover Park on Main Street during the event times,” she wrote, including no road closures.
However, work on sidewalks and utilities could continue in the immediate area, the email said. Roadwork could also continue away from the park.
According to Richardson, there were days construction ended at 2 or 3 p.m. Some days they continued until 4 p.m., she said. Even with the early stop time, construction impeded market setup earlier in the day and customer parking.
“There was multiple times that we had to redirect our vendors in and out, multiple times that vendors actually left because of it, and we had a lack of customer base because it was just too constricting for them to find a place to park,” Richardson said.
“Good news is, there will be no construction this year,” Gailey told The Herald. “Main Street looks beautiful.”
“No other market I know of”
Last year, Jensen pushed back against the fees she paid to host the market, she said.
Originally, Jensen paid $15 per vendor per week and $40 for each application she received. Over the first five years, she paid the city about $80,000, in addition to any sales tax collected.
For the money, the city closed the road off Main Street next to The Mill and provided the location, trash services, road and bathrooms, Jensen said.
In a social media post, Gailey said that electricity, waived permits and a $5,700 expense reimbursement were also included in the services.
Even with the added services, Jensen felt the fees were too high.
“This is a city and public park, so you should be managing the trash anyways regardless of the market happening or not,” Jensen said. “I don’t really know what kind of major expense power is when most of the time the power on festival street didn’t even work on a regular basis, and the lights in The Mill are usually left on anyways.”
She added that the $5,700 reimbursement was “seed money,” to get the market started. She made no profit from it, she said.
In his social media post, Gailey said the city spent more on the event than was collected.
“Taxpayers helped subsidize the market,” he said.
For the Snohomish Farmers Market, Jensen pays $500 and is provided the space, an outlet, water access and the ability to put out a portable toilet, she wrote in an email.
“No other market that I know of has to pay upwards of $6k-$17k to host a market,” Jensen said.
Before the 2025 season, she reworked her contract to pay $5 per vendor per week and $20 per application. That resulted in a payment of about $6,000.
Afterward, communication with the city seemed to change, especially regarding the construction, Jensen said
“It almost just felt like, ‘Well, we’re getting less money from this contract, and she’s really being a squeaky wheel, so let’s not really show the respect that we have for the last five years,” she said.
During the season, Garceau audited the farmers market.
“Her records did not seem to reflect the maps and vendors that were showing up weekly, so we performed an audit as is outlined in the contract,” Garceau said.
“There’s a lot of nuance to what happens on market day,” Jensen said. “That doesn’t account for the people that canceled or the people that turned around because they were stuck in construction for too long.”
Garceau acknowledged how difficult it would be to verify the audit’s accuracy because Jensen was not recording which vendors actually showed up and which did not.
“The city does believe that there were more vendors than were reported,” Garceau said. “Since she was not returning for another season, we decided to just let it all go.”
Gailey agreed.
“I respect Sarah’s opinion to step away and I’m OK with it,” he said.
Taylor Scott Richmond: 425-339-3046; taylor.richmond@heraldnet.com; X: @BTayOkay
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