City Council Talks Food Trucks

By Jessica Forbes

At Thursday’s City Council meeting, a discussion about food trucks and the policies needed to guide their operation will begin, which is a dialogue that downtown restaurateurs are encouraging.

Nick Zangari, owner of New York Nick’s, brought the issue of food trucks to the council in September and later followed up with City Administrator Colleen Castille.

“According to Nick and other restaurant owners, there are impacts to their businesses from these food trucks, so we wanted to start the discussion,” Castille told council members at Tuesday’s Agenda Conference.

The agenda item sponsored by the mayor requests the council to “provide input and direction as to the future regulation of food trucks and mobile vendors.”

“I thought it would be more helpful if we could come here, you could hear from the people what the concerns are, you could hear from the food truck vendors about what they would like to see,” Castille said.

Earlier this year, the Independent News took a look at the food truck situation in Pensacola and discovered that the existing guidance for vendors is limited, putting Pensacola behind other cities in the region such as New Orleans, which has recently established ordinances and is enjoying a burgeoning food truck community.

Sherry Morris of the Planning Services Division stated to the council on Tuesday, “We’re working with very little specificity in the code.”

The city is looking to other examples in the state as potential models for how to move forward. Councilmember Andy Terhaar said he’d been examining Tallahassee’s ordinance, which, along with policies from Orlando guiding mobile food vendors, was included in agenda materials for the councilmembers to review.

Councilmembers Megan Pratt, Charles Bare, and Sherri Myers expressed concern that the format of the regular City Council meetings don’t allow for the free discussion requested by the agenda item, but consented to leave the item and hear more from city staff and the public before determining the next steps—i.e. whether an ordinance alone would be the answer, or whether a hearing before the Planning Board and better addressing mobile vendors in the city land use code is necessary.

“We can’t prohibit it and people want it, so what do we do?” said Castille.

The City Council meets Thursday, Nov. 14 at 5:30 p.m. in the City Council Chambers on the first floor of City Hall, 222 West Main Street.