The city council’s land-use committee seemed eager to move forward quickly with new rules expanding access to street food this morning, when the group held what could be its penultimate discussion of the street food legislation. The proposal would allow street carts and trucks on city sidewalks and streets, with substantial restrictions and setbacks from places like restaurants, schools, and retail stores.
Unlike at previous meetings—when restaurant owners and street-food vendors who operate on private land turned out in force to protest the proposal—the objections this morning centered mostly on whether allowing street food near schools would lead kids to abandon high-school cafeterias in favor of off-campus taco and hot-dog stands (“You’re talking about schools that have vending machines with Cheese Doodles and fried pork rinds,” council member Sally Bagshaw quipped), and questions about whether the council is moving too quickly on the ordinance.
Unusually, for a committee that typically moves at a glacial pace, committee members seemed prepared to vote the legislation out as soon as a few weeks from now; committee chair Sally Clark even noted, “It’s not that [the legislation] is moving forward with great speed, [so much as] that it’s been kicking around for a couple of years now.”
Council members also seemed reluctant to expand the restrictions on food vendors that are already in the legislation, noting that adding more limitations could make it unattractive for would-be vendors to operate. In some cases, they seemed to support lifting restrictions in the legislation. For example, instead of barring food carts within 200 feet of all public and private schools, council members agreed that it made more sense to bar them just near high schools, which are the only schools that let kids leave campus during lunchtime. “Two hundred feet is a nice buffer, but beyond that, I don’t think it’s going to accomplish anything,” council member Tim Burgess said.
They also discussed creating an exemption to the buffer for transit stations, so that the Mount Baker light rail station—which is within 200 feet of Franklin High School’s athletic field—could have mobile vendors in its cavernous downstairs plaza, something Sound Transit has said it wants.
The committee also tacitly nixed the idea of expanding the buffer zone between food carts and brick-and-mortar restaurants to 100 feet, noting that such a large setback would effectively prohibit food carts and trucks in neighborhoods like Pike-Pine, where there’s a restaurant on virtually every block. (They do support a 50-foot setback, which still dramatically limits mobile food vendors’ ability to set up shop.)
And they rejected a proposal to make food carts and trucks comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act, noting that making trucks wheelchair-accessible (by requiring them to put their service windows no more than three feet off the ground) would be expensive and impractical, and isn’t recommended by city lawyers or state guidelines. “Having the windows 36 inches high is difficult because of the actual mechanics of the truck,” Clark said.
The committee meets again on July 13, at 9:30 am.
