Columbia City Council Rejects Most of Restaurants' Proposals for Food Trucks

Columbia City Council met November 15 to decide the future of mobile food trucks, greatly scaling back a proposal supported by the trucks' competition that would have incorporated some safeguards for food safety, fire safety and other ideas to protect consumers. 

While Council rejected the Columbia Restaurant Association's proposal of a 1,500 foot buffer between a food truck with primary menu items that competed with brick and mortar restaurants of similar concepts, Council went against the City's Planning Commission recommendation of having no buffer at all in their zoning ordinance.  Instead, Council adopted a 100 foot buffer between food trucks and any restaurant.  The ordinance does not allow food trucks to park on public right-of-ways or public parking spaces.  They will only be allowed to set-up locations on private property with the property owner's written permission.  The Restaurant Association advocated a 200 foot buffer between a food truck and a brick and mortar restaurant.

The association's position on the buffer was that zoning is used to prevent new development from interfering with existing residents or businesses and to preserve the "character" of a community.

The new ordinance will not take affect until mid-June 2012.

"Council would have adopted the Planning Commission's idea of no buffer, potentially pitting some restaurants against a food truck that had permission to park in an adjacent parking lot to their business.  Thankfully, after listening to the association's position, Council adopted the original staff recommendation of a 100' buffer," commented Tom Sponseller after the meeting.  "Our ideas of incorporating some food safety, fire safety and other provisions in the ordinance were not allowed as the ordinance being discussed was in the zoning laws and not related to business licensing.  The discussion opened not only city council's eyes towards some well thought out ways to make sure future food trucks operated safely, several food truck operators in attendance realized that the five current trucks were operating safely, but in the future a bad operator could come to down and ruin the business they have worked to build."

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