Food truck vendors looking to do business in Waseca will soon be allowed to sell their products on city property.
At its Feb. 20 meeting, the City Council discussed ordinance 1111, which will allow mobile food trucks, vending wagons, food stands and food carts to be on city property through a permit process. Food vendors are currently only allowed on private property with the permission of the property owners.
With the popularity of food trucks and stands growing all over the state of Minnesota, city leaders want to allow the mobile food businesses in several public locations throughout the city.
The initiative was started about four years ago by Mike Anderson, who was then the assistant to the city manager.
“I actually went with a lot of what he started, and then we had reached out to other local cities and the League of Minnesota Cities to see what communities have done for their food trucks,” City Clerk Julia Hall said.
The Waseca ordinance will allow food trucks to enter public parking lots with a permit, but they will not be allowed to park along city streets or in city parks. Exceptions may be allowed with a special event permit that will have to be submitted to and approved by the city.
Food trucks will not be allowed to park on Elm Ave. or on State St. at any time due to safety concerns about the busyness of the two streets. Vendors will also have to provide their own electricity for operations unless prior approval is completed with the city for the limited electricity available.
To get a permit, there a $25 application fee and the one-year permit costs $100, with.a $25 option for a single day or event.
If vendors are continuing to do business on private lots such as Bomgaars or Wal-Mart, they do not need a permit from the city since they are not on city property. They will just need permission from the business or property owner along with the inspections of the food truck that is required by the state and county.
Waseca residents attended the city council meeting and voiced their concerns during the public hearing. One of the residents was Robert Dickerson, who spoke on the behalf of his neighbors who have a food truck.
He noted that he found one of the regulations in the ordinance did not seem right as many food vendors have full-time jobs on top of working the food truck. The ordinance states that food sold or served from mobile food carts and mobile food vehicles may not be prepared or stored at a private residence.
“Nobody is running food trucks from Waseca as their profession, they’re all doing it on weekends and working their other jobs during the week,” Dickerson said. “They don’t have the availability to commercial kitchens to start in the morning, a lot of the prep work is going to be taken care of at home.”
Dickerson further stated that the regulation might be an overstep since food vendors already have to be up to the state health code and both the state and county require service aide certification. Hall agreed with Dickerson and noted that the city will remove the regulation.
Ashley Sanchez, whose parents own a food truck and is neighbors with Dickerson also spoke about the ordinance and stated that it would be nice if food truck vendors would have a little bit of freedom and not a lot of regulations.
“I would just urge a little caution in writing the ordinance,” Dickerson told the council and city staff.
Resident Robert Tackett also had concerns about the ordinance, stating that there does not need to be that many regulations in it for food trucks to operate on city grounds.
“I absolutely do believe that it would be super simple for us to do a simple permit process, like you were saying, $50 a year. However, you added 11 sections of rules,” Tackett said. “You added a whole bunch of extra rules that we don’t even need for some strange reason.”
Mayor Randy Zimmerman and the council insisted that the ordinance has to have certain rules and regulations. They expressed concern that, if something happened to someone, like an injury while the food truck is operating, the city will be liable for it, since it’s on city property.
“Once you’re on public property, I think it’s only fair that the community wants to know that everything is safe for everyone involved and that their liability isn’t to the individual business,” council member Stacey Schroeder said.
In response to Tackett saying he thinks the rules are a little overreaching, council member Mark Christiansen said food trucks can then go park at Bomgaars or Wal-Mart and continue to do their business not on city property.
“This isn’t an overreach for city property that we pay taxes for,” said Christiansen.
With the city planning on revising some of the ordinance, it was tabled, and the staff will come back with a revised version in the near future.
“We are doing this to make it less restrictive and more conductive to allow more food trucks because there is a desire for it, there is a market for it and it’s going to bring vibrancy to our community,” Zimmerman said about the ordinance.
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