Tentative OK on a new food truck law

Walhalla’s policy makers are finding out that creating a new law that regulates how long and where food trucks may do business in the city is a process that doesn’t please everyone.  The city council yesterday gave first reading to a replacement ordinance covering mobile food trucks.  Josh Roberts cast a dissenting vote. The new law would confine the trucks to a city-leased lot on Main and N. Spring streets, but the owner of a small business said she’d like to be able to station a food truck in front of her shop.  The law also would require a mobile food vendor outside the downtown overlay to be 250 feet from the door of a stick built eating establishment, unless the vendor can show proof that the restaurant owner doesn’t object to a closer proximity.  Another member of the business community who spoke last night, Randy Chastain, says the issue to him are food vendors out for a quick dollar and aren’t subject to the kinds of checks required of other food providers.