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City Targets Food Trucks With Plan To Force Them Into Designated Parking Zones
By
Nell Casey
Published Apr 18, 2013
Modified Apr 18, 2013
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By
Nell Casey
Published Apr 18, 2013
Modified Apr 18, 2013
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The city's ongoing efforts to curb the booming food truck business kept right on rolling at a City Council hearing last night. The Daily News has a dispatch from the meeting, where the Council discussed a bill introduced by Councilman Dan Garodnick earlier this month that would create specific parking spaces for food trucks, barring them from setting up anywhere else.
Though Garodnick represents the Upper East Side—the same neighborhood that proposed matching signage for mobile vendors—the bill has support throughout the Council, especially from members in Queens. “The lack of rules that exist right now have led to the wild West Side, the wild East Side, and the outer boroughs just being left to fend completely for themselves,” Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-22nd) told 1010 WINS. “Our brick-and-mortar establishments are the backbone of Queens County, and they are going out of business on a daily basis."
The NYC Food Truck Association, an organization that includes many of the big names in mobile vending, is open to discussion about the proposal but worries that it's too vague in its current form. "There are many unanswered questions about where these parking spots would be situated, the political process by which spots might be added or removed, how these spots would be allocated to vendors, and how these regulations would be enforced."
Director of the Mayor's Office of Operations Liz Weinstein also attended the meeting, and revealed that the city is looking into implementing a rental system for mobile vendors. “We are interested in further exploring a market-based plan to allow food trucks to bid for the right to certain street locations, similar to the current Parks Department concession program," she said. The system, which can be seen in all its exorbitant glory outside the Met, would mean significant overhead costs to the trucks who would now be competing with one another for the coveted space.
Sean Basinski, Executive Director of the Street Vendor Project, is against the idea and points to another issue with the proposed plan: the privatization of public space. "Major corporations, like Starbucks and McDonalds, could surely afford to buy up every vending spot in the city, making independently-owned vending businesses—which have been hallmark of our city for 200 years—a thing of the past.” Basinski can probably rest easy, for now, as the City Council isn't keen on fast food trucks either.
Tagged
City Council
dan garodnick
food trucks
mobile food vendors
peter vallone
street vendor project
Nell Casey
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