Nottingham Food Pantry
An overview of the Food Pantry and a look into issues about its location
Nottingham’s Food Pantry is part of the town’s welfare services. The Food Pantry assists families and individuals who struggle to afford food and basic household supplies. At present, 32 families are receiving aid, a figure that has risen sharply in the past few months as local residents struggle with high inflation.
Nottingham has had a Food Pantry for over 30 years. Originally it was located at the Nottingham Community Church, but in the late 1990s it was relocated to the then-new Town Hall, where it has remained ever since.
The provision of this location - roughly about 1,000 square feet - along with heat and electricity are the only economic support the Food Pantry receives from the town’s taxpayers. The Food Pantry receives economic support from the federal government in the form of food. The Food Pantry supplements this with donated food from individuals and retailers, and food and household supplies purchased from funds donated to the Food Pantry. Donations to the Food Pantry are tax-deductible.
The Food Pantry is staffed entirely by volunteers, nearly all of whom are retirees. Much of the infrastructure for the Food Pantry, such as shelving, was built by volunteers.
While the federal government sets criteria for eligibility for government aid, because the Food Pantry has sources of donations beyond that provided by the government, the Food Pantry can help families in need regardless of the federal criteria.
The Food Pantry serves only Nottingham residents. All calls to the Food Pantry are confidential. New applicants are met by appointment.
Food is distributed on the third Thursday of each month. The last few days of the month are the most difficult for families in need because help to them via food stamps, Social Security, or other welfare payments comes to them at the beginning of the month. By the end of the month, these funds are often exhausted, leaving their food supplies low.
The Food Pantry has recently been in the news because the town has denied the Food Pantry use of the door that provides direct access to the Food Pantry for food deliveries. Each month the Food Pantry receives three scheduled deliveries, each of which takes the Food Pantry’s volunteer workers under an hour to unload from the delivery trucks using the direct-access door. At all other times the Food Pantry is accessed through the front door of Town Hall, down the main hallway.
Loss of access to this door is a major inconvenience for the Food Pantry.
The reason the town will no longer allow this door to be used is that a recent certification of the Nottingham Police Department’s facility identified this door as a privacy risk for the department’s sally port - the secure and private entrance to the police station that’s on the side of the police station. The area around the sally port is carefully monitored, as I was able to demonstrate during the few seconds it took me to obtain these exterior photos of the Food Pantry’s direct-access door. An officer promptly came out and told me that I was not allowed there.
Despite the fact that this area is supposed to be private, it clearly is not. It abuts nearby private property that looks down on the sally port. See the nearby house in this photo. Because of this, it seems strange that the sally port could be certified as private.
This is not the only issue with the sally port or the police station. The Facilities Committee identified several others in their report about issues with the town’s facilities, concluding that the town needs a new police station.
At the December 4 Board of Selectmen meeting the matter was brought up. The benefits of the certification were not identified, only the inconvenience of losing access to the door was discussed.
Selectman Bartlett suggested that the solution may be to relocate the Food Pantry to the Old Town Hall. The question of whether this is feasible remains open, but the solution seemed implausible to Chelli Tennis, director of the Food Pantry. For example, the Food Pantry needs substantial electrical capacity and a backup generator to support its refrigerator and three large freezers.
[Commentary: Two solutions occur to me. One is that a gated privacy fence could be installed between the sally port and the Food Pantry’s door to provide privacy to the sally port during food deliveries. Additional privacy fencing could shield the sally port from view from the neighboring property. The other is that the Food Pantry will need to recruit a lot more volunteers for unloading the trucks. The unloading will need to take place in front of the Town Hall, with food being moved by cart to the back of Town Hall.]
Here’s an aerial view. “SP” is the sally port. “FP” is the direct access door for the Food Pantry.
Thank you, Doug, for your excellent reporting on important Nottingham issues that would otherwise remain unknown.
I had to look up the definition of a “sally port”. I think you are correct that the direct sight from the private residence on Camelot is an issue. I wonder how the certification was completed with the door not a true sally port, assuming your pic was standing at door looking towards the residence?