MOSES LAKE - The Moses Lake City Council managed to cut through some confusion and grant use of McCosh Park to the Moses Lake Farmers Market again this year.

The market board of directors requested permission to use the park for 2012, but the city's decision was complicated by recent talk of damage to sod and trees caused by vendor vehicles unloading and parking on the park turf over the course of the season, which runs May through October.

"If you compact the soil over the roots of the tree they basically suffocate and die," Parks and Recreation Director Spencer Grigg told council members during a past discussion of the problem. "Occasionally it's fine but every weekend, 27 weekends in a row, it makes an impact."

An initial proposal suggested the city could mitigate the damage by installing a paved loop in McCosh Park. Grigg said this week the original project estimate of $177,000 was grossly overstated due to "calculation errors," and the actual project cost would run somewhere between $25,000 to $30,000.

But the lesser amount would still exceed the legal definition of a public works project and require the city to solicit bids, he said, a prospect that would likely raise the cost beyond what the city is willing to pay.

The city began brainstorming other options - including that vendor booths be situated along a linear service road, or set up in the McCosh parking lot. Grigg said those ideas were trumped by a proposal to round up volunteers and install the paved loop using donated materials and a chunk of cash left over from a city grant program.

And this is where the confusion set in, according to Bruce Bailey with the Moses Lake Farmers Market board of directors.

"I think in the past we've had a big miscommunication between the parks and rec department and the Moses Lake Farmers Market," he told council this week.

Last year city parks staff presented the problem of damaged trees to market organizers, who responded by dramatically reducing use of vehicles on the turf, Bailey said. The market board also purchased $3,000 worth of carts for vendors to use in transporting their wares over grass from vehicles parked on hard surfaces.

This year, Bailey said he and others were confused to hear that, despite the board's efforts, the city was considering ideas that could undermine the market's accessibility, especially to disabled and elderly customers. Organizers also heard the city wanted them to pay for the concrete loop, the cost of which Bailey said would exceed the market's annual earnings.

"We would gladly like to start a communication with the council to work something out that is usable for us, the parks and recreation department and the people attending the market," he said. "We're requesting that you still consider using a loop system without the hard surface and see if something can be obtained within the next two years - not immediately go with a linear plan that seems to divide the market and keep customers from easy access to anything they want to buy."

Grigg clarified the city will allow vendors to set up shop on the same loop they were using last year, but with plans to build a concrete path when necessary funding, volunteers and materials come together.

Councilman Dick Deane said he's already in contact with three people in the construction trade who are onboard to help with the project. Funding is still being sorted out, but Deane and Grigg both said the city has agreed to give roughly $7,000 in money left over in the city's Neighborhood Self-Help Fund, an annual pool of about $40,000 that the city council can, under certain guidelines, allocate to local groups for project assistance.

"We're going to go out of our way to take this burden as much as possible off of your back," Deane told Bailey at Tuesday's council meeting. "And we're not there yet because we don't have the final plans drawn up and all the input we need, but I think you'll be happy with what comes out of this."