Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito is pushing the City Council to pass a last-minute bill boosting the number of street food vendors. There’s a case to be made for the change — but not as stealth legislation.
The council is set to vote on the bill Tuesday, in its final meeting before new members take office. It would add hundreds more licenses for food trucks and carts over the next decade, with about 10 percent set aside for veterans.
It would also establish a dedicated law enforcement unit for the industry as well as setting up an “advisory council.”
But the council tabled a similar expansion bill last year, and hasn’t held hearings on any of the problems that torpedoed it. The speaker is just bringing up a new version (whose details have shifted behind closed doors) without engaging the critics.
Concerns include pedestrian safety and traffic congestion — and the potential harm to small brick-and-mortar businesses already under huge financial pressure.
While mom-and-pop shops must pay soaring rents (and often-added Business Improvement District fees), the food trucks park for free outside their doors.
Yet Mark-Viverito is hellbent on passing the bill, aiming (laudably enough) to boost the immigrant community she sees as her main constituency. “It’s a legacy piece for her,” one council source told Politico.
Again, we’re open to OK’ing new trucks: Some of us buy lunch at one nearly every day. And it’s troubling that existing permits, renewable every two years for $200, can resell for 20 grand or more on the black market. But a bill written in darkness and passed by lame ducks isn’t the way to fix anything.