{"id":15521,"date":"2025-11-25T13:55:59","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T20:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/longtime-christmas-bazaar-canceled-over-confusion-about-city-of-durango-license-rules\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:48:11","slug":"longtime-christmas-bazaar-canceled-over-confusion-about-city-of-durango-license-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/longtime-christmas-bazaar-canceled-over-confusion-about-city-of-durango-license-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Longtime Christmas bazaar canceled over confusion about city of Durango license rules"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Confusion
Confusion and crossed wires about the city of Durango\u2019s policy for vendor requirements and business licensing led to the abrupt cancellation of the Craft Folk Craft Bazaar, which had been scheduled for last weekend. (Durango Herald file)<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Crafty Folk Craft Bazaar, a staple of Durango\u2019s Christmas festivities for 50 years, was abruptly canceled last weekend after rumors \u2013 or miscommunication \u2013 led vendors to believe the city would charge steep fees to sell their wares.<\/p>\n

Organizer Mary Beth Torres, who took over the event from her mother, said she and others heard about the requirement secondhand on Nov. 18 \u2013 just four days before the bazaar was set to take place at Durango-La Plata Senior Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found out \u2026 that there are going to be some new enforced requirements of all the vendors that we\u2019ve never heard of before, and so we don\u2019t have enough time to get those,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s a tax ID number and the city tax and the state tax thing that we all have to have before we can vend anything. And so it\u2019s been canceled because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Torres said she didn\u2019t hear directly from the city. Instead, Senior Center Director Vicki Maestas told her a city employee had relayed the new requirement.<\/p>\n

Organizers said they were told each vendor must purchase a $105 business license, but the city said that figure overstates what is actually required.<\/p>\n

Vendors can obtain an event license by submitting a one-time application fee of $30 and a $25 license fee, allowing participation in up to 15 single-day events per year, according to an email from city spokesman Tom Sluis. He was unsure where the $105 figure may have originated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey (Vicki Maestas) heard from someone at the city,\u201d Torres said. \u201cThat\u2019s all we know.\u201d<\/p>\n

The event typically features a few dozen local craftspeople \u2013 what longtime vendor Karen Preston called \u201ccottage vendors\u201d \u2013 who pay $35 for a table.<\/p>\n

Torres said most vendors make only modest sales.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are years where you make nothing \u2013 I mean, you don\u2019t even make the table fee back,\u201d she said. \u201cOther years you\u2019re doing OK \u2013 $100, $200, sometimes a little more. It\u2019s just mostly for fun. We\u2019re not making our mortgage payments or buying fancy new cars or new jewelry or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year, 23 vendors had already signed up to sell homemade crafts and small gift items. Only a handful already held business licenses, organizers said.<\/p>\n

The bazaar also moved to a new location this year. For decades it had been held at Summit Church, but construction and an increasingly busy event schedule forced the group to move to the Senior Center, Preston said.<\/p>\n

Organizers said the last-minute news about fees left no time to contact vendors, assess their willingness to pay or help them complete the required paperwork.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t so much that they\u2019re doing it, it\u2019s that they did it so last-minute and gave us no time to see how everybody felt about paying it and going ahead with it,\u201d Preston said.<\/p>\n

Sluis said the city recently updated its code, and staff members have been reaching out to event organizers and hosts to inform them of changes, which is likely why Maestas received a call.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat update to Chapter 13-2 clarifies and updates when business licenses are required,\u201d Sluis said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been making a lot of changes to the code and updating the code \u2026 everything from sales tax collections to building and electrical code updates. It\u2019s part of a general modernization.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the city issued a news release clarifying that sales tax must be collected and proper licenses must be obtained when sales occur at events.<\/p>\n

Event organizers can find a more detailed explanation of sales tax requirements online at www.durangoco.gov.<\/a><\/p>\n

The release said all events and vendors must be licensed and collect sales tax, regardless of the size or nature of the event.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for Durango\u2019s enterprising youths, the city will waive license requirements for child-run lemonade stands and bake sales, Sluis said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of ways this flow chart runs in terms of who needs a license and who doesn\u2019t,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no hard and fast rule.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sluis said the broader goal is consistency \u2013 creating a \u201clevel playing field\u201d so even small or occasional vendors follow the same tax rules as businesses.<\/p>\n

How that works in practice, though, is open to discussion and feedback, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to have a situation where people are paying more in fees and taxes than they would collect on the sale of an item,\u201d Sluis said. \u201cThe goal is to help people understand the playing field.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sluis said it is still unclear how the bazaar organizers received the information or from whom.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still don\u2019t know who talked to who,\u201d he said. \u201cFrom a customer-service perspective, we\u2019re trying to figure out how we can improve this. We don\u2019t know when the organizers let us know they were having an event, whether they communicated anything to the vendors, or what conversations occurred. There are a lot of unknowns at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n

jbowman@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

51st annual event called off days before opening at Senior Center<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[507,28,1762,1160,994],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-15521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango-city-officials","tag-headlines","tag-sales-tax","tag-taxation","tag-trueanthem"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15521"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19701,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15521\/revisions\/19701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15521"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=15521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}