Source: Rhino Times Greensboro

Downtown Food Trucks to Stay

by Alex Jakubsen

November 01, 2012

The Greensboro City Council is slowly continuing down the road toward allowing food trucks to operate downtown, and at a Tuesday, Oct. 29 work session councilmembers heard an update from city staff on the process

The ordinance the council is considering will allow the food trucks to operate on private property downtown except during special events, even though the ongoing two-month food truck “pilot program” is on public property and involves barricading a block of Commerce Street for the safety of the food trucks’ customers.

Councilmembers raised several questions about the proposed ordinance change that will allow food trucks to operate in the Central Business District. Food trucks are already allowed to operate in other parts of town.

There was discussion over the health code standards that the trucks would be held to. Councilmember Marikay Abuzuaiter, who owns Mahi’s restaurant, pointed out that health requirements do apply to food trucks.

“Now the new law is anyone preparing any food or touching anything or any food in the food truck has to be wearing gloves,” she said. Food trucks are inspected by the Guilford County Department of Public Health. Under North Carolina law, food trucks not associated with a stationary kitchen are required to meet the standards of a commercial kitchen.

Councilmember Trudy Wade said that the food trucks might be given an unfair advantage over brick and mortar restaurants in the area, since they have a lower overhead.

She talked about two restaurants along High Point Road that had been complaining about a taco truck operating in the parking lot of a nearby gas station.

“That’s two businesses that they could lose on High Point Road and we don’t need to lose any more businesses on High Point Road,” Wade said. Greensboro City Manager Denise Turner Roth said that staff could look into establishing minimum distance from brick and mortar restaurants.

One of the ordinance changes involves adding language to ensure that ice cream vendors are allowed to operate under the new policy. The current ordinance only mentions dairy products under goods that can be sold from a vehicle lawfully parked on the street. Roth said that dairy is not currently defined and may not be broad enough.

Councilmember Zack Matheny said he thinks that a policy relating to ice cream should be as broad as possible to make sure vendors are not excluded on technicalities.

The council is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the food truck ordinance at its regular meeting Wednesday, Nov. 7 at 5:30 p.m. in the council chambers at city hall.

Also at the work session, staff attributed errors in the processing of around 50 housing compliance cases to computers.

According to Assistant City Manager Andy Scott, there was a pre-2010 database for housing complaints operated mainly under the Rental Unit Certificate of Occupancy (RUCO) ordinance, which was abolished by the NC General Assembly and has been replaced with a “post-2010” database.

“In the process of trying to merge those two databases, they didn’t speak to each other, and so a lot of that transition had to take place by hand. And unfortunately taking place by hand did not happen in as timely a fashion as we probably would have liked or in as complete a fashion as we would have liked,” Scott said.

According to the PowerPoint presentation to the council there are currently 933 open housing compliance cases, about 50 of which were “null” cases in that they appear to be open or unresolved although they may not be.

“We apologize for any inconvenience and any issues that have happened,” Scott said. Staff said they are still in the process of reviewing all cases and checking the database against files to ensure that information is correct.