St John Town committee plans Kris Kringle Market, proposes Small Business Saturday ‘passport’

The St John Town Economic Development Committee on May 14 discussed plans for the town’s Kris Kringle Market, set for Nov. 30, 2025, and a proposal to pair the market with a Small Business Saturday “passport” program intended to drive shoppers to participating local businesses.

Committee member Chuck Pullen outlined the passport concept and logistics and said the town has already booked Santa for the market “from 10AM to noon.” Pullen described a system in which shoppers pick up a passport at an initial booth (proposed to open during Friday’s fireworks/Christmas-in-the-park opening night), visit participating businesses to collect stamps, then return a completed passport to a designated table at the Kris Kringle Market in order to receive raffle tickets for donated prize baskets. Pullen said organizers would set a deadline — suggested as about noon on market day — for turning in passports and drawing winners.

The committee also discussed practical issues: volunteer staffing for a booth at the fireworks and again at the market, low or zero town budget for materials, simple printing for passports handled by the town if possible, and visibility concerns for an evening event. A member suggested producing small plastic goodie bags containing passports, a business list and candy canes. Committee members also suggested promoting the passport via the town water bill insert and social media.

Members said vendor participation would likely require donations of items for raffle baskets and that donation would be a condition of participation, but they did not set any required dollar amounts. Pullen said vendors could contribute small items that could be bundled into larger baskets. The committee discussed creating a solicitation letter to distribute to businesses in person or by email.

Committee members suggested opening vendor and participant applications in July and closing them in October to give organizers and vendors adequate setup time. The committee briefly discussed expanding vendor hours by two hours compared with last year’s market but avoided committing to a final schedule; one member cautioned against making the market excessively long because attendance tapered in later hours during prior events.

Committee members noted a procedural hurdle: modifying the town ordinance that governs vendor fees and payments will be necessary if the committee wants to change vendor hours or fee structures. The transcript records that the vendor-fee ordinance will be discussed and brought back at a future meeting, but no formal ordinance change was made at the May 14 session.

Logistics flagged for future meetings include finalizing the passport design and printing method, soliciting donated raffle prizes from businesses, coordinating with the farmers market organizers on vendor application timing and vendor list order, and recruiting volunteers to staff booths during both the fireworks opening night and the Kris Kringle Market itself.

No formal votes were taken on the market plan itself during the May 14 meeting. The committee did approve the minutes of the April 9 meeting and later adjourned; both motions were moved and seconded on the record, and the chair called them approved, but no individual mover/second names or a roll-call vote tally were recorded in the transcript for those two procedural motions.