Ferndale holds food-truck listening session as city weighs private-property rules

Ferndale Planning Commission members convened a fact-finding discussion on March 19 with food-truck owners and property operators to gather operational details that staff said will inform any future rules for food trucks on private property.

The session, led by planning staff and Vice Chair Schwalter, was explicitly framed as a learning exercise: “we really hadn’t had any feedback or consulted anybody who was dealing with food trucks and really wanted to understand just how food trucks operate in Ferndale,” planning staff member Roger said during the meeting. The discussion focused on private-property arrangements (restaurants, parking lots and private landlords) and did not address public vending on city-owned land.

Vendors described how they currently operate and asked the commission to keep rules predictable. Abdullah, a franchise owner of a burger truck with multiple locations, said instability in other cities has been costly: “we just invested last year about $10,000 just to do asphalt for our food trucks … But what we’re really scared of is 1 day the ordinance is like, ‘Hey, you’re not allowed to be…