The daily newspaper reported this weekend on the difficulties the city of Pensacola has had getting an ordinance drafted regulating food trucks – Food trucks could face delay.
Two years ago, Inweekly brought of the idea of food trucks. For the next six to eight months, the Pensacola City Council and Downtown Improvement Board discussed how to regulate them or even allow them in downtown Pensacola.
Councilman Andy Terhaar presented a ordinance but it was scrapped for a pilot program. However, no one participated in the pilot.
A year passed. No action from the mayor’s office.
In March, Councilman Charles Bare presented an ordinance based on those used by other cities with successful food truck programs. The council sent it to the planning board for review. Instead of reviewing the proposed law, the board and city staff drafted a new ordinance, which is expected to be debated by the city council this month.
On “Pensacola Speaks,” I asked Councilman Bare for his take on the convoluted history of the proposed food truck ordinance:
Councilman Charles Bare said:
I was frustrated because the pilot program didn’t work out and nobody signed up for it, so I decided I’d find a working ordinance, or one that appeared to be working. I looked at St. Pete’s ordinances and found one that looked to be pretty thorough and adapted it to our ordinances.
I knew that the Council would not just go for it and approve it without some other review, and the planning board exists to review such things. A lot of things are required to go to the planning board because they happen to fall within land development code, which this technically does, and so we had to send it to the planning board.
The problem to me, though, is that I sent an ordinance there. I went to the meeting when they first talked about it, and they changed it significantly in the first meeting, applying what they call a buffer zone. A 200-ft buffer.
I told them at that meeting I did not support that aspect of the ordinance, and so I’m looking at the new ordinance–which I have a strike through where they struck out a whole bunch of things, added a few new things–and it’s been significantly modified in a legislative process that by a body that’s not a legislative group.
To me, the problem is the planning board has taken on a legislative role. They’ve rewritten law, or proposed law, and I’ve got a problem with that.
How have been his communications with the 7th Floor, i.e. Mayor Ashton Hayward, Chief Operations Officer Tamara Fountain and City Administrator Eric Olson?
The very funny thing about all this is I got an email on the 24th of this month, asking me if I still wanted to sponsor the ordinance, or if I just wanted to present it as an information item.
It’s not even my ordinance anymore. That’s what I told the Chief Operations Officer–that this is not my ordinance anymore. What I sent them has been changed so erratically, they took out the food truck rallies, they added the buffer. It’s to the point where I can’t sponsor this as it is, and I’ll work to defeat it, if it comes as it is right now.
There’s the problem I see, is that you’ve got the mayor’s staff–the staff who works only for the Mayor, not for the Council–that are helping this body rewrite the ordinance.
The body itself doesn’t have all the skills of staff. They’re not staffed, so they have to use the skill set of the staff that they have, who all work the the Mayor.
They rewrote the Ordinance, and now I’m being asked questions ‘Do I support this? Do I support that?’ from the Mayor’s office, and I’m like, ‘but you all wrote it.’
I’ve been told ‘We want to try and be on the same page’, and apparently, the Mayor doesn’t support the buffer either. So I’m like, why in the world would staff write a ordinance that has a buffer in it when he doesn’t support it either. It’s crazy.
On Friday afternoon, City Administrator Olson sent an email to Bare that quote statement sent to the PNJ defending city staff and the planning board.
Olson said the new proposed ordinance approved by the Planning Board was how the board chose to make its recommendation to change Title XII of the City code to the city council. He said the city council can approve approve, amend or deny the recommendation at a public hearing.
He denied that the city staff guided the board in the production of the ordinance.
Olson warned the PNJ not to draw any conclusion to the contrary.
“In reference to the Planning Board, Councilman Bare said in his email that ‘they are staffed by mayoral employees who conceivably guided them in the production of an ordinance related to food trucks that was significantly different than the ordinance sent to them,'” wrote Olson. “While I am sure that he in no way means to imply that City employees directed or otherwise influenced Planning Board members, I would caution you not to draw that conclusion.”
The City Administrator said, “As mandated by the City Code the Planning Board is staffed by City employees who perform administrative tasks for the Board. They do not engage in the deliberations between Board members.”
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How was Bare’s ordinance presented to the Planning Board? What instructions were they given? Guess I will have to review the tape.
