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Commission reopens review of peddlers and seasonal-use rules to accommodate food trucks and seasonal outdoor businesses
Summary
Planning staff reintroduced an update to the city’s peddlers ordinance and a proposed seasonal temporary use permit to create a lighter permitting path for food trucks and seasonal outdoor commercial activity, and the commission discussed guardrails and parking interactions.
The Planning Commission on Sept. 18 was reintroduced to a project to modernize the city’s peddlers ordinance and create a new seasonal temporary use permit for semi-permanent seasonal businesses such as food trucks that operate in one place for extended months of the year.
Staff said the current peddlers ordinance (last updated in the 1980s) is a poor fit for contemporary food trucks and seasonal operations because it imposes a burdensome permitting process and background checks designed for door-to-door sales; it produces only one to two permit applications a year. “There is a fairly extensive permitting process that goes into that that is prescribed by the peddlers ordinance involving background checks, a lengthy service of process, process serving, interaction with the city clerk. This hasn't been updated since the 19 eighties,” staff said.
Why it matters: commissioners said they want a regulatorily light path that allows food trucks, seasonal snack-bar style operations and temporary outdoor business uses to operate while retaining guardrails for public safety, parking and impacts on brick-and-mortar businesses. Staff described two distinct regulatory tracks being considered: (1) a streamlined peddlers-permit path for brief, low-impact events and mobile vendors, and (2) a new seasonal temporary use permit for longer seasonal operations that would sit between peddlers permits and full site-plan-level review.
Commissioners asked staff to be explicit about the problems the new rules should prevent—what the guardrails are—and to minimize barriers to entry so small vendors can test concepts (food trucks as launching points for restaurants). Staff also noted that the city’s upcoming parking-management work for Market Street and Garden Street will be relevant when determining public-parking impacts and turnover policies for food trucks on public streets.
Staff will prepare draft regulations and criteria for when an activity needs a peddlers permit vs. the seasonal temporary use permit vs. a site plan, and return to the commission with a proposed framework and application process.
