Committee holds final food truck meeting

The last of three meetings with community members regarding food trucks was Thursday morning. Hosted by the Creston City Council’s food truck committee, area restaurant owners were invited to discuss opinions and options for the new food truck ordinance. Previous meetings were focused on food truck owners and the Creston Parks and Recreation Board.

The main two points of contention for the attending owners focused on the location of the food trucks and fees.

Location

Dairy Queen owner Alan Shaffer said he spoke with multiple business owners to get their thoughts.

“The general consensus was they thought that food trucks generally ought to be on private property unless there are special events,” Shaffer said.

He personally thought adding a specific food truck district might be a good idea.

“If it’s an economic development kind of thing, maybe you want a district,” Shaffer said. “For example, downtown, if you think the trucks would bring more business, set up a couple block district.”

Either way, Shaffer “some distance would make sense” between food trucks and brick-and-mortar restaurants.

John Kawa, a member of the parks and rec board and owner of the building at 211 W. Adams St. which hosts Anson’s Bar and Grill, said food trucks were fine for special events.

Jake Kawa, previous owner of A&G Restaurant and Lounge, was against food trucks parking near restaurants, even in the case of special events.

“On the special event days, if you put a food truck right across the street, which has happened, people are going to make a choice,” Jake said. “I mean, it’s their right to choose, but if [food trucks] are not right in front of your business, they’re probably going to come to your business. If you have something right in front, they might go elsewhere.”

Jake requested that, if food trucks are invited to park near restaurants, they not serve the same type of food.

“Mario’s sells gyros, don’t bring a gyro truck across from them. Don’t bring in a burger truck across from a certain place. If you want to bring in a sushi truck, that’s awesome. Nobody has sushi,” he said.

Fees

Mario Galanakis, owner of Mario’s Sports Bar and Grill, was in favor of fees for locally owned food trucks being lower than outside food trucks.

“I’m not against the food trucks, especially the local ones. They’re part of the community. No different from opening up a brick and mortar to me, they just chose a different route,” Galanakis said. “The outside food trucks, the big name ones, they come in, take the money and take it somewhere else, and that’s now what small towns are about.”

Shaffer said that, though he didn’t include himself in this opinion, many owners he spoke to were in favor of all food trucks paying fees and didn’t think the current fees were too high. The current fees are listed as follows: Non-refundable application fee $10, one day license $50, one week $150, six months $500 and one year $1000.

“I didn’t meet anybody who that said, ‘oh, those fees are too high.’ I don’t know that I met anybody that really cared what other towns were doing,” Shaffer said.

John agreed, stating he didn’t think the fees were high enough.

“I think food trucks ought to pay like everyone else pays,” John said. “Brick and mortar pays the taxes in this town, brick and mortar hosts events, brick and mortar does a lot for Creston while food trucks just sell their goods, leave town and leave their trash. I don’t think it should be cheaper, I think it should be a hell of a lot more.”

Future plans

Mayor Gabe Carroll explained the city council would take the information gathered at each of the meetings to figure out the best plan for a new food truck ordinance. He warned certain wants might not be possible due to legalities.

“What I’ve heard from our attorney is, we probably can’t do a two-tiered system where locals pay this and others pay this,” Carroll said. It’s something we’re going to look into and try to dig into more, but I think from a legality standpoint, we might be tied as far as setting one fee.”

In regards to the distance food trucks must be from restaurants, legality would depend on the setback distance.

“I think what we’ve found is some places have struck down setbacks if they’re too much, so if they’re 600 feet, then they’ve struck down those,” Carroll said. “The ones that are within 150 to 100 feet, they don’t seem to have an issue with those.”

Carroll said the next few city council meetings will likely have the food truck ordinance on the docket as the city council continues to discuss what the new ordinance will look like.