Parks and Recreation discuss food trucks

Creston City Council’s food truck committee attended the Creston Park and Recreation board meeting on Tuesday to discuss options for the new food truck ordinance.

The food truck committee consists of Matt Levine and Brenda Lyell-Keate, along with Creston Mayor Gabe Caroll.

Parks and recreation board member Gary Borcherding said the board’s main goal was to keep the parks clean.

“All we want to take care of is our park. All we want is the respect for the parks and the park crew so the people aren’t dumping on them and then leave,” Borcherding said. “If they do their part and pick up after themselves, that’s all we ask. The only way to enforce it is with them having some skin in the game.”

In order to enforce this, the parks and recreation board is proposing a $100 deposit for any food truck in the park.

“There’s no incentive for them to clean anything up,” Borcherding said. “If we put $100 deposit on it, they pay up front, they clean up what is their mess... Our goal is, people just hand us checks and we hand them back, but we want that option.”

The returning of the deposit would be at the discretion of Creston Parks and Recreation Director Mark Huff. However, this deposit wouldn’t ensure the entrance of food trucks into the park. Food trucks would only be allowed in Creston parks and adjacent roads when invited by the coordinator of an event in the park.

“The food truck setting up on its own is retail,” Borcherding said. “We don’t do retail.”

McKinley Park Aquatic Center (MPAC) committee founder Samantha Baird questioned what was meant by this, as the parks were not making money from food trucks selling in the park.

“Best I can say, if you have an event at your office and it closes your office for three days, but you have appointments, instead of renting a place to do it, you just go out and use the picnic table at the park,” Borcherding said. “Well, if three or four people do that, all of a sudden you’ve got a business district.”

The parks and recreation city council representative Kiki Scarberry disagreed with this comparison.

“That is a ridiculous example and you know it,” Scarberry said. “You guys should be doing what the people want you to do, not what you think.”

After continued comments between several city council and parks and recreation board members, Scarberry left the meeting.

Baird later asked about the use of ball fields similar areas for food trucks, but Borcherding and parks and recreation board member John Kawa quickly shut that down.

“It’s in the park,” Kawa said. “If someone wants to do the concession stand, all they have to do is come over and tell us.”

No action was taken.

The city council’s food truck committee will meet with community members one more time sometime in September, this time focusing on restaurant owners.

In other park news...

Baird is working on the completion of a final grant for MPAC updates, this time $100,000 from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a federally funded program. This follows grants from Dekko and Wellmark, as well as donations from community members.

Now that the pool heating has been completed, the next update will be a climbing wall. The board plans to order the wall this week, with the hope of it being installed at the pool by the spring.