SEQUIM — The Sequim Open Aire Market Board of Directors has dissolved the sole staff position and laid off newly hired director Lisa Bridge, board president Patricia Earnest said.

“We have no money to pay Lisa,” Earnest said Friday, adding that Saturday was to be Bridge’s last day.

The market, which runs from mid-May through October, has brought in no new sponsors in 2010, Earnest said, so it could no longer afford the director, who worked 20 hours per week at $18 an hour.

Earnest, who became board president in December, said she found the market bereft of income, having lost its larger sponsors, such as the Jace The Real Estate Co., backer of the market’s music stage in 2008, amid the deepening recession.

Hired in December

Bridge was hired in December to succeed Mark Ozias, who ran the market for the past four years.

She was chosen from a pool of 26 applicants from around the Northwest.

A grower herself, she was hailed for her passion for local farmers and the Open Aire Market that brings them together on Saturdays in spring, summer and fall.

“We feel terrible,” Earnest said of the layoff. “We do support Lisa. But we don’t have any dollars to support her.”

Bridge, for her part, is incredulous.

The board gave her the news Thursday afternoon, and has told her that Ozias hadn’t brought in sufficient sponsor funding to continue paying her wages through the winter.

Once the market opens in spring, cash will presumably begin to flow: gross sales from its dozens of produce, art and food vendors spread out on West Cedar Street totaled some $250,000 last year.

Off season slump

During the off season from November through April, the director is charged with organizing the Open Aire Market’s indoor events, such as the Feb. 13 Winter Warmup show at the Sequim Boys & Girls Club.

But it’s sponsorships that tide the market over, and “they didn’t come through. That put us into the red,” Bridge said.

Yet “I’m here to rally. I can see beyond this. Let’s get more creative in our thinking. We’re talking about a few-thousand-dollar hole . . . I said I would work less hours to get through this,” she added.

But Earnest said no, there isn’t money to pay Bridge at all right now.

The budget predicament — a dearth of sponsors and the director’s salary, which increased during Ozias’ tenure — is something the former director left the board with, Earnest said.

Looking for manager

Now the board plans to hire a market manager — not a director — sometime in April, in time for the May 8 opening day.

“We have every confidence we’ll be up and running,” Earnest added. And for the manager job, “Lisa Bridge would be our top pick.”

Earnest understands, though, that Bridge may have to find other work. She and her husband, Joe Bridge, own the Rainbow Farm on Towne Road, and they have a baby daughter, Olive.

Earnest also said she wants a part-time manager who is “more hands-on” than Ozias was.

Bridge, for her part, said she still believes in the Sequim Open Aire Market as an essential community gathering place, and wants to be part of its financial recovery.

But its health depends on harmony between the board and the manager, she believes.

“If there was a unified plan, I would stay with this. I want to. I’m hopeful, still,” she said, adding that she sent an e-mail to the board members to the effect of “let’s keep working together.”

Ozias, responding to the assertion that he wasn’t strenuous enough in his recruitment of sponsors, said he was quite active on that front.

Last year he brought on board Les Schwab Tire Co. as well as Pondicherri and the Sunshine Cafe, two downtown Sequim businesses, he said, and he won $2,750 in tourism enhancement grants from the city of Sequim over the past three years.

‘Thinking outward’

As for the director-versus-manager question, Ozias said that in the recent past, the board members believed that if the Open Aire Market was to fully blossom into a vibrant community hub, it needed a proactive director on the job more than a couple of days a week.

“To sustain that, you have to go out to the community. You can’t rely on just [income from] the vendors,” he said, adding that traditionally, it has been the board’s responsibility to go out and find sponsors.

“I feel the board is only looking inward, and not thinking outward,” Ozias said. He believes there’s support in the community at large.

“I know better than anybody how many people love the market,” and have high hopes for its growth, he said.

“I did my best to put forth a vision,” for the event.

A new vision

Ozias and his wife, Lisa Boulware, have embarked on a new vision: the Red Rooster Grocery, a store specializing in local products.

“We’re determined to open in April,” he said, adding that he and Boulware are busy preparing the space at 138 ½ W. Washington St.

At the same time Ozias, like Bridge and Earnest, holds out hope that the Open Aire Market will rally.

“Ideally, the manager or the director and the board need to work well together,” he said, “to go out into the community and develop community support.”

For information about supporting the Sequim Open Aire Market, phone 360-460-2668.

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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.