Liveblog: Food Truck Apocalypse City Council Meeting

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The meeting hasn't even officially started and a bunch of food truck owners are schooling Reggie Brown about the assumptions and misinformation that went into the proposed legislation.

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Poor turnout, considering how strongly a lot of people seem to feel about the issue. Stop reading this and come on down!

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The food truck owners are taking Reggie to task for not consulting with them before drafting the legislation. He's backpedaling and equivocating like mad.

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which food trucks? did you catch any names?  How is he back peddling?

Thanks for liveblogging this for us DGDD!

The head of a food truck organization is here, I'm sure I'll catch her name again later.

He was repeating complaints from whoever inspired this... legislation, and when contradicted was all like, Oh, well I don't mean YOU people, I'm talking about other BAD people.

Frankly, he doesn't make much sense. I hope he doesn't have much to say or I will have an atrocious cognitive dissonance headache before this is over.

Starting to fill up now. It seems that a lot of Mr. Brown's concerns are about food trucks who are not following the existing rules. Maybe the city needs to just enforce the regulations that are already in place instead of endangering the livelihood of the people who ARE following the rules.

He

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I retract the poor turnout statement, the room is filling up.

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Aaaand I just went up front and looked at the table and the Request to Speak forms are a-piling up.

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Opening remarks begin.

My name is Reginald Brown, District 10. THe reason we brought everyone together is we don't have city legislation here with food trucks, sand without having city current legislation, is most people do the right thing, but we have some people not doing the right thing... before it gets too big... I want to get that out on the table that I am not anti-food truck.

Good for him. He says he wants to form a committee to draft legislation that everyone can live with. I wonder if he got this idea in the last half hour.

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At the table, Jax Parks, Procurement, Office of General Council, cant read the rest of the placards.

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Downtown Development Authority is here. Reggie Brown wants a legal definition of a food truck. He went to a workshop about food trucks in Seattle, apparently. He says he likes the idea of somebody without a lot of capital to start a business.

General Counsel Terry Shaw is going to give us an overview.  A Powerpoint presentation of the Food Truck Drat Ordinance.

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They've just handed out copies of the draft ordinance. It appears to mostly prohibit where food trucks can operate, with plenty of nitpicking little details to make sure the operators can get ticketed to death. 20 feet from this, 75 feet from that, 300 feet from this, 500 feet from that, oh GOD

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Maximum of two coolers? Why?

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Two hundred thousand dollar liability insurance requirement?

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Now the Downtown Investment Authority.
They have concerns about the legislation affecting the vibrancy of downtown.

Special Events has some requirements that probably fall outside of the legislation, because Special Events as opposed to everyday.

Planning and Development says as written the legislation probably won't impact zoning regulations.

Nobody from Code Enforcement is here.... hmmm.

[Ajax]

He went to a workshop about food trucks in Seattle, apparently.

Too bad he didn't mention his bullshit proposal for legislation while he was at the Seattle workshop.  Maybe someone there could have nipped this in the bud. 

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Office of Economic Development guy says the state division of hotels and restaurants does regulate food trucks and do inspections.

Oh Lord. Don Redman says "There's been issues with the food trucks and the B&M restaurants downtown. As a business owner myself, the fire department inspects my business and sends me a bill every year. blah blah blah stuff about fire safety that didn't make sense."