A Closer Look at the Mayor's Push to Replace ACCESS
Part 3 of our Watchdog Series on the Talent Community Resource Center
Talent City Council met in a Study Session on April 2nd in which Mayor Darby Ayers-Flood used 40% of the meeting trying to convince everyone that ACCESS should not be invited to operate inside the new Talent Community Resource Center with its currently unhoused Talent Food Pantry because it is unable to pay rent for the space. She wants a different food service nonprofit in there that would pay their share toward what will be needed by the City to maintain the building.
Ok ok wait. Back up. Context. Recap. Important points.
The City of Talent applied for, and was then awarded, a federal CDBG grant through Business Oregon that would fund the purchase and remodel of the old Asante office building at 49 Talent Ave. for $1.5 million. The original reason for applying for the grant was to provide a home for the Talent Food Pantry, operated by the Jackson County nonprofit organization ACCESS. It was also intended to host other community service-oriented nonprofit organizations in what they are calling the Talent Community Resource Center. Here is the December press release in which the ACCESS Pantry is mentioned.
The ACCESS Pantry had been housed in the old Town Hall for many years, but in April of 2024 there was a fire in the building that left ACCESS without a space to either distribute or store food. The ACCESS Pantry has been operating on a smaller scale outdoors in a City-owned parking lot since September 2024. The Town Hall fire also displaced the City Council as well as several other groups.
Very little has happened with the building since the grant was awarded due to various delays, but in January 2025 then City Manager Gary Milliman reported to Council that he had met with some potential tenants and would be doing further outreach and taking meetings with interested parties. We had some issues with them meeting with groups before knowing for sure what the criteria would be.
Last month the City Manager (now Alex Campbell) presented his first draft of a set of steps and criteria to the Council that outlined what would qualify a nonprofit group to be considered as a tenant in the building. At that meeting on March 19th, Council pushed the discussion to a Study Session so they could go over it in more detail. The result of that session is where we are now.
Back to the April 2nd Study Session, in which the agenda was to discuss Campbell’s proposed criteria and process for tenant selection for the building. They really did not get to any criteria in depth other than the Mayor’s new rule of “must pay their own rent” being added to the other 3 minimum requirements on the list:
She was clear from the jump that she wants to find a different food nonprofit that pays rent instead of allocating ACCESS’s share of costs to other tenants. Her proposed rule would effectively push ACCESS out of building, given the organization’s policy restriction on not paying rent for food distribution.
05:15 MAYOR: But I want to clarify that, while it does say in the application that food distribution… I think we all recognize that that is the intention, to head it in that direction…. But if it were at the expense of other organizations in the space, I think I'd want to have further discussion on that. I mean, this is certainly the most viable spot for food distribution, as long as I think that we can come to a place where the organization doing the food distribution is able to meet the other requirements, such as - well, I think what we what we wrote in that was record of financial stability. I would hope that we would add to that the ability to share the cost for the building.
13:49 MAYOR: I would propose then… that another possible minimum and a fourth bullet point would be to share in the cost of the maintaining and paying the utilities, and just for the record, I think the newspaper printed something like $1.10 a square foot, which I think was an erroneous, it was a mistake, I think, because I, we, nobody's even done an assessment on that, and I think it's too early to be talking about numbers. But I do, based on a lot of discussion about this, and not bringing on another expense for the city, in terms of public spaces, I do think that that would be prudent to add that.
Councilor Medina pointed out that the standard model for sustainable food pantries is to only utilize spaces that do not charge rent, so it may be difficult to find an organization that would agree to this. At that the Mayor claimed that she knows that there are some food distribution models out there that do pay rent instead of passing it on to others.
10:45 MAYOR: When that model is deployed, somebody's paying for it. And in the case previously, the taxpayers paid for the Town Hall that they were in previously… And there are other nonprofits that are doing food distribution that do own and maintain their own space at their nonprofit costs.
When the City Manager and other Council members brought up potential solutions around the ACCESS Pantry sharing its operating space with other groups that could afford to pay for it, given that their rent would still be well under the market rate, the Mayor had this to say:
26:05 MAYOR: But there's still the question of the portion of the food pantry that would be used 24/7 for storage. And so I think it is a viable idea, although I do have a little heartburn distributing the cost of open space to every tenant, especially if not every tenant is using it… It can be challenging to try and have equitable use of open space when everybody's sharing the cost burden of that, but there's still the question of the 24/7 space that is needed and how to offset that. And I think I would have a more difficult time offsetting those costs to the other tenants when they have no access to that space. So again, I feel like a minimum standard should be based on it… but that space shares the cost burden, and if we're not able to find somebody that can share that cost burden, I think we need to have a different conversation. Maybe it’s going to the community and seeing the community wants to offset that cost. Maybe it's adding to the fees. I do think that there's still room for a lot more exploration with organizations that are orbiting this work, this food access work, I think there's a solution out there, and I'm just less inclined to set up a design of criteria that designs that cost burden on the rest of the tenants.”
Eventually the Mayor conceded that if, and only if, no other food organizations with rent money can be found would she support looking at the logistics of distributing the monthly costs to other tenants.
She does not make her strong preferences on the matter quite as obvious in her followup Facebook update as she did in the previous night’s Council meeting. In her post she’s neutral and passive, again bringing up the not actually discussed option of adding a fee to Talent residents’ already really painful water bill, knowing full well that it will be immediately rejected.
Here were the alternatives discussed as opposed to asking the other spaces rents to go up in order to cover the food pantry share of rent.
A small city fee (on the water bill) to create a dedicated fund for this imperative service for residents. My best guess is that would likely be less than a dollar.
Finding a well established nonprofit partner for Access who also works in nonprofit food service (to accept the Access food donations and distribute them), who are willing/able to contribute toward the costs for the space.
One direction provided was to priortize food nonprofit orgs who can share the costs. If no other solution is found, spreading the cost for the food distribution out to the other tenants would be a solution.
A food distribution is an expected part of that space from the beginning. To keep it real, the question discussed last night was how to equitably cover the cost of the maintenance/upkeep/overhead and prioritize those food distribution nonprofits who are able to cover their share of the reduced costs, given that the city can no longer bear the cost of providing space for nonprofit.
In Talent with Mayor Darby Facebook page, April 3rd 2025. Shared to multiple groups.
She posted that the day after the meeting and in response, as expected, even Pantry supporters say they wouldn’t be cool with a fee added to their water bill. So now the Mayor gets to shrug and be all ‘Welp, I tried. The people have spoken. They don’t want another fee. I guess we’ll have to do exactly what I wanted to do then!” Aaaand now she’s a hero for saving us from a fee.
What she made clear in her 40% meeting time allotment, if not in her Facebook post, was that she would not support passing ACCESS’s share of rent on to other tenants without at the very least eliminating all the options she prefers first, and that her most preferred option of all the options is to give the space to a “food service nonprofit” who will pay their rent. Which is interesting.
Does anyone else agree that this is the most preferable option? We do not know. Why exactly is this option preferable to sticking with the long-running and popular ACCESS Food Pantry? We do not know. The only answer we can point to is that it gives Mayor Darby heartburn.
Talent Council Watch has been following along with this Community Resource Center project since the very beginning and there have been some eyebrow-raising statements made, generally around tenancy. But this one is different. Something is definitely *off* about what the Mayor is pushing for here. Let’s talk about why it’s not sitting right.
First of all, the fact that ACCESS doesn’t pay rent is no surprise to anyone involved. It’s not like the City just found this out 4 days ago and is suddenly scrambling to figure out how to adapt to this shocking twist. ACCESS has literally never paid rent (beyond the token $1 per year) in its many years of being a tenant of the City of Talent, and it does not pay rent for any of its 30+ food bank distribution sites. In fact, this is true for most food pantries in the United States, which typically receive donated, in-kind, or highly subsidized space agreements due to their limited resources and the nature of the free, volunteer-run public service they offer being an exception to standard property cost-recovery arrangements.
This has always been the case with ACCESS, and the City has always known that. They certainly knew about it when they submitted the grant proposal, which included a breakdown of what they expected to collect in rental revenue ($1.10 sqft) for building utilities and maintenance.
Secondly, the Mayor mentioned repeatedly that the City Manager (Milliman at the time) and she discussed the expense coverage options at great length prior to submitting the grant. Multiple times she recalls the huge amount of discussion they had before submitting the grant around whether or not the City could or should absorb some of the costs.
09:07 MAYOR: …I appreciate the fact that there's language in the grant that addresses that concern, but I don't think there's enough language in this grant that suggests that shared costs would be a minimum standard as well. I know we had healthy discussion about that prior to even putting in the grant; That we could not or should not be bringing on another cost burden… I don't see it anywhere in here that it addresses that directly, and I think that we should address it directly.
15:47 MAYOR: ..but in the discussion before we submitted this grant, we talked about wanting to make sure that we would get this resource, bring it into our community, not have the community bear any of the burden of the ongoing costs, and then just pass on just that cost
You think that during all that ample discussion about maintenance costs, it never once came up that the group that would be using the largest portion of the building, the one with the displaced service that the entire grant is being built around, would not be able to contribute to revenue? Of course it did!
The real question is: How was the fact that ACCESS could not pay rent for a large portion of space incorporated into the City’s plans for generating enough revenue to cover the costs? And were they transparent about it?
When the City was in the process of applying for the CDBG funding back in September 2024, they solicited a letter of support from the Executive Director of ACCESS, which was included in the grant proposal documents submitted.
If you can’t read that image, here’s the important part:
I am writing on behalf of ACCESS to express our strong support for the City of Talent's application for CDBG funding to purchase a building that will be transformed into a vital Community Resource Center. This project is especially significant to us as it would provide a new, expanded location for the ACCESS Talent Food Pantry, which was displaced earlier this year due to a fire in its previous building.
The Talent Food Pantry has long served as a critical resource for individuals and families experiencing food insecurity in our community. The fire not only disrupted these services but also highlighted the need for a larger, more equipped space to meet the growing demand for food assistance in Talent. The proposed Community Resource Center will provide the pantry with the much-needed additional space to store and distribute food efficiently, allowing us to serve more people and improve the quality of services we offer.
When Carrie Borgen wrote that letter in September of 2024, ACCESS management was obviously under the impression that their Food Pantry would be the one with a space in the new building. She says it bluntly. Why did she think that?
In fact, it seems like a whole bunch of other people thought that too, and it was mentioned as one of the reasons why several organizations said they were supporting the City’s CBDG application. Here are a few snippets from letters the City of Talent submitted with their proposal:
We understand this project will expand ACCESS 's Talent Food Pantry, which was displaced earlier this year due to a fire in its previous building.
CASA of Oregon has been actively involved in affordable housing development in the Talent area as part of the Almeda Wildfire recovery process, and have witnessed the traumatic impact the wildfire had on lower income families, and how ACCESS has effectively responded to their many needs. We value our partnership with ACCESS and want to continue to support their efforts to assist lower income households achieve long term housing stability and overall well being.
Peter Hainley, Executive Director of CASA of Oregon
The center will provide a new location for an ACCCESS food pantry as well as space for community services provided by other Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) for residents of Talent and surrounding areas.
Ann Marie Alfrey, Executive Director, RVCOG Southern Oregon
The relocation of the Talent Food Pantry to a larger, more functional space is a key element in this project, ensuring that individuals and families in Talent have access to critical food resources.
Tucker Teutsch, Executive Director, Firebrand Resiliency Collective
The Talent Food Pantry will find a permanent home and the building will serve as a hub of connection for social services and community services that are vital to residents feeling safe and welcome. Having a safe space to go for help is the first and most important step in community connecting.
Dee Anne Everson, CEO/ED, United Way of Jackson County
As an organization based in Talent, Revista Caminos has consistently supported initiatives serving the local Spanish-speaking community, including the ACCESS Food Bank
Alfredo Flores, Camino Magazine
So where did they all get that idea?
Did the Mayor and City Manager tell everyone whom they asked for application support that funding would mean the ACCESS Talent Food Pantry would have a permanent home, while knowing full well that 1) they would need rent from every tenant to make it work and 2) ACCESS can not pay rent? Why would they do that?
We have to ask, how in the world did we get here, with community members and partners alike being blindsided with a major change to what we were told was a primary purpose of the building purchase? Was this the result of a budgeting mistake made by the City? Was it a misunderstanding that got away from them? Or was this always the plan?
We see only a few possibilities to the question of how we got here:
The City told ACCESS that they would need to start paying rent in the new building and ACCESS agreed to it at the time, but then backed out once the grant was funded. No way. If this had happened we would definitely know all about it. The Mayor would have told us this was the case because it would take the heat off herself for replacing them.
The Mayor and Manager Milliman inexplicably believed that, despite all existing knowledge and evidence to the contrary, ACCESS would scrap their own long-held universally applied no-rent policy and would suddenly start paying rent for the new Talent building no questions asked, and the City went ahead with budgeting and writing an entire proposal around the ACCESS Food Pantry as a primary tenant under that assumption, without ever confirming it with ACCESS. Could be considered negligence if that’s what happened, but it seems unlikely. Gary Milliman was supposed to be very good at writing grants.
The City did not raise the topic of rent with ACCESS at all, despite all that robust conversation about how they were going to cover all expenses with ACCESS utilizing the largest share of tenant space. Given their diligence in ensuring the cost of building upkeep would not be passed to the City, this would have had to be an intentional omission from their conversations with ACCESS. Why would the City deliberately avoid talking about their rent expectations with ACCESS while writing the grant proposal?
The City purposefully misled ACCESS about their rent expectations, leading ACCESS to believe they would be able to continue with their long-established no-rent relationship, and the Mayor is trying to backtrack on it now that the grant has been awarded. Why would the City intentionally mislead ACCESS about the rent they would be asking for from them?
What it looks like from our dark and suspicious little corner of town is that the City submitted an effective 1.5 million dollar grant proposal centered largely around the displacement and imminent needs of the ACCESS Talent Food Pantry, fully aware that ACCESS would not be able to the pay rent that would be required, and now that the grant has been funded the Mayor is attempting to insert a rule that would in effect disqualify ACCESS from the food distribution space so that another nonprofit, one that she prefers, can get it instead. That’s what we think it looks like anyway.1
We’ll be on the lookout for a more niche “food service” nonprofit (i.e. not quite a pantry?) to start getting casually name-dropped by the Mayor on social media as a possible ACCESS replacement, and then for that name to start popping up in minutes and agenda packets. We’re thinking a small but growing org with plenty of operations funding that perhaps wouldn’t have been quite as established, or widely supported, or as compelling of a grant narrative centerpiece as the displaced ACCESS Talent Food Pantry was in September 2024. A nonprofit that, when you Google the names of its leadership team along with our Mayor and Council members, you get some solid hits. A Board of Directors, an Advisory Board. That’s kinda just how it works here. Small town and everything, you know.
What’s next?
Manager Campbell is now rewriting the tenant criteria to present at the next Council meeting to reflect the changes given to him by the Mayor. Eventually, whether at that meeting or a later one, Council will vote on a motion to proceed with judging rental applications using a specific set of criteria.
Regardless of any one person’s opinion on who should or should not be given a space in the building, we can probably all at least agree that the Mayor’s personal preference on the matter should not be what drives Council’s decisions on it, right? Whatever her motivations are and however much meeting time she takes at the expense of everyone else’s opportunity to contribute their thoughts and ideas, it is simply not about what the Mayor would prefer. She doesn't even get to vote on it unless it's a tie (and it's never a tie). It’s about what City Council believes will best serve the people of Talent, and we really need them to represent us right now. It’s why we elected them.
What should be happening next is that Council members should be finding out from Talent residents what we think about how to deal with this problem. Remember back in August when City Council ensured us that the public would be part of the tenant selection process? Well here’s their chance to make good on that, because it certainly hasn’t been true so far. This question of how to approach ACCESS’s rent issue is a great one to put in front of the community for feedback. But not via comments on a post written by Mayor Darby in a closed, ideologically homogeneous Facebook group, but rather using legitimate civic engagement tools like a public hearing, a town hall forum, a focus group, an online survey. There are so many ways to gather useful feedback from constituents that are accessible, fair, and commonly used in municipalities that put more than lip service toward incorporating public input into council decision-making.
Dear City Council Members: We know you have thoughts about all this. We’d like to hear them. And we would encourage you to take advantage of one of the many public feedback tools to find out what Talentonians think you should do about the rent problem. You have no idea all the types of genius lurking out here, maybe one of us has an even better idea than what has been proposed so far. And even if not, wouldn’t it feel good to know that you’re making an important decision about a major community asset with input from the community and the actual people it is intended to serve?
Thanks for reading!
Talent Council Watch
talentcouncilwatch@gmail.com
This is not an accusation. It is not misinformation. This is an opinion, which fortunately we do still have the right to express. Individuals, anonymously or otherwise, are allowed to speak in a public forum about the optics of certain actions and to theorize about the political motivations of our elected leaders.
This comment was sent to my email from TCW but I can't see it here for some reason, maybe it was deleted?
Talent Council Watch replied to your comment on A Closer Look at the Mayor's Push to Replace ACCESS .
This comment sounds like it was written by the unpaid staff of an authoritarian dictator in a communist country who wants people to think it's actually a democracy, lol. Sorry but people can talk about whatever they want, however they want. Also every single thing you said is either untrue, makes no sense, or doesn't apply anything we actually wrote (sometimes all 3 at once!)
My Response.
Interesting that a request for factual accuracy gets compared to propaganda from a dictatorship.
This is a public conversation. If criticism is fair game, so is correcting misinformation. Dismissing any disagreement as “authoritarian” while claiming to support accountability is ironic, to say the least.
Nothing in the original comment said people couldn’t talk about what they want. It pointed out that the article presents speculation as fact and omits relevant public information. That remains true, regardless of how loudly it is mocked.
A serious publication should be able to handle disagreement without resorting to name-calling. If your goal is transparency, then you should welcome scrutiny, not shut it down with jokes.
It appears Clarkie has blocked my account, but their comments are still visible when I'm not logged in. To be clear I'm not the Mayor and I do not know Clarkie. Just an anonymous reader, similar to the author of this newsletter, whose anonymity does not seem to be an issue unless someone is presenting a different point of view.
Posting anonymously is not a tactic. It is a choice, and one this publication uses freely. If it is acceptable for the author, it should be acceptable for others participating in the conversation.
If blocking someone helps avoid disagreement, that is up to you. But disagreement is not lying, and calmly pointing out misleading claims should not be treated like a personal attack.
The concerns raised were about how the article framed events, skipped context, and pushed conclusions that are not supported by the full record. That is not accountability, it is narrative shaping.
Public conversations should focus on facts, not assumptions about who is speaking, especially when you can watch the full video of these meetings and arrive at your own conclusion rather than reading an "article" that has a clear agenda and is filled with opinion.
Also its hilarious to pull a comment that I clearly deleted and edited then re-post it then block me all in one swift move. Solid civil discourse...