3 Food Trucks Is 3 Too Many for Peoria

Looks like the fine folks of Peoria won't be chowing down on kimchi tacos anytime soon. This week, the city council of the Illinois metropolis voted down a proposal to offer three (three!) permits to food truck operators. It's not like the trucks were going to be allowed to run wily nilly around the city:

The defeated ordinance would have charged truck operators $3,400 to serve food at approved locations within the Warehouse District, in front of the Peoria Civic Center and along Hamilton Boulevard next to the Peoria County Courthouse. The fee was $1,000 less for truck operators who already own a restaurant.

Outside the Downtown area, the ordinance restricted food trucks from being within 200 feet of existing restaurants.

Also, the ordinance established a 500-foot restriction on food trucks from schools, carnivals, festivals and other special events.

The whole debate started when a couple of would-be food truckers approached the city about opening up shop:

City officials had been working on crafting an ordinance for several months after a couple of food truck operators approached them about wanting to operate in Downtown Peoria during lunch hours. Two public meetings have been held and the council had previously deferred the issue so the city's staff could provide more information and refine the ordinance.

The new rules would have replaced already allowed food carts with food trucks. Too radical for Peoria, apparently.

Peoria is not alone, unfortunately, in its battle against mobile eats.

Via Jeff Trigg.

Comments

[Almanian...still]

I've been to Peoria. Unfortunately.

Three food trucks IS too many for that shithole.

[Josef]

ditto

[Pope Synchronicity II]

I'm still not quite sure what people have against food trucks. The only complaints I've heard about them here in Florida are from restaurant owners, but everyone seems to understand that they're just bitchy because there's more competition.

Maybe people in Peoria just don't like having things.

[Apatheist ?_??]

The fee was $1,000 less for truck operators who already own a restaurant.

That little piece of equal protection violation should clue you in to who opposes them.

[Tulpa the White]

If they're parked on the street, they're de facto subsidized by taxpayers, particularly if they're parked in a primo location for restaurants. The rent in those places tends to be pretty high compared to feeding a parking meter so it's seriously unfair competition.

If they're parked on private property (parking lots, etc) there's no reason the govt should be involved, I agree.

Now, I think Peoria is batty for not allowing them to pay for a license to even the playing field. But if the people want public property to be used as a temporary restaurant they should vote their conscience on the matter.

[plu1959]

It's not like the trucks were going to be allowed to run wily nilly around the city.

You'd best keep an eye on Nilly. He's a wily one. We ran him out of town, but he snuck back in in a food truck. Got the owner to run him around town, spreading his dangerous ideas.

[joshua corning]

Peoria

Now I know how Astoria Oregon got its name.

[Alack]

Milton Friedman made a point about votes like this in Capitalism and Freedom (although he was actually talking about monetary policy and free speech).

It is immediately clear that if we were to take each case up as it came, a majority would almost surely vote to deny free speech in most cases and perhaps even in every case taken separately[...] It is perfectly conceivable, and I would say, highly probable,[...] that, [putting all free speech cases together in one bundle], the people would vote exactly the opposite to the way the would have vote on each case separately[...] [When] he votes on the bundle as a whole, he gives much more weight to the infrequent denial of free speech to himself when he in in the minority than to the frequent denial of free speech to others.

By even putting the practice to a vote, the people whose choices are being voted on are likely to be told that they cannot carry out as standing laws allow based solely on the fact that there are so few who would directly benefit from the vote going in their favor. Tyranny of the majority as its finest.

[Tulpa the White]

If your "choice" involves commandeering a section of public property, damn right the majority gets to decide whether to let you do it.

[sage]

Economic freedom, how the fuck does it work?

[Alack]

Ah, but you see, it clearly doesn't work, which is why we need wise people in government to tell us what are acceptable and unacceptable marketplace decisions. Externalities and unforeseen outcomes ruin people's lives, so we need regulation to make sure the game is played fairly. "Freedom" is just a buzzword rightwingers use to mean the ability of corporations to lord over us, as only government should be able to.

Obama 2012

[Mr. FIFY]

"Economic freedom" is a racist term.

/liberal stoopidity

[Tulpa the White]

I missed the part where they were forbidden from parking on private property.

[sage]

Yeah, you're right, I don't either. Not that it has anything to do with the topic at hand...oh, wait. Are you saying that since they're partially free to run their trucks that they're free? That would be like Hitler saying he's not a monster because he didn't kill all the Jews.

[Tulpa the White]

Just like I'm not free to pitch a tent in a street parking space and sleep there to save on lodging.

Freedom does not imply the right to use property that doesn't belong to you.

[CE]

I guess the city didn't want the extra food truck license fees and sales tax receipts going into the city coffers.

[sage]

I guess they didn't want people to eat either. Because that's the horrific thing that will happen if these food trucks roam the city: PEOPLE WILL EAT!!

[Hyperion]

Guys, I just figured it out...

You see, this is why we have the geniuses that we currently have in charge, because the rest of us are just too slow to see the greatest threats against us.

What if... they have NUKES in those food carts! We need a WAR ON FOOD TRUCKS, because we have to be ahead of the terrorists! Thank God, we have been saved again. I feel so bad that we did not have the vision of our great nanny state overseers.

[Warty]

Network President: "'Bite my shiny metal ass' could be a catch phrase!"
Executive Alpha: "80% likely!"
Executive Gamma: "It will play in Peoria!"

[Pip]

I counted twelve this afternoon on just Marquette Avenue alone. There has to be at least thirty of them in the Minneapolis central business district selling everything from lobster rolls to grilled pork patties and sushi. Yum!

[Hyperion]

The fee was $1,000 less for truck operators who already own a restaurant.

Got themselves some mini cronyism going on there?

This is not the America that I grew up in.

When I was a kid, some of my earliest and most nostalgic memories, I remember there being food carts or stands on the corner of many blocks in our neighborhood. And I am talking about Commiefornia here. Best damn enchiladas that I have ever had from those Mexican food cart vendors. And no one cared, no one saw them as any type of threat, and I never seen a cop so much as look at them. We have acheived so much social progress in this country, yeah, right.

[Anacreon]

Pretty strange that a town with hookers on practically every corner would be so down on food trucks. How else are those working girls going to eat without leaving their stations?

[Hyperion]

There are hookers in Peoria? It sounds like such a Mayberry type of boring sleepy ville.

Maybe the corruptocrats in Peoria like really skinny hookers?

[Anacreon]

For real. Remember all those Richard Pryor routines about the characters around in his youth? Those were all in Peoria. He grew up living in his grandmother's brothel where his mother was one of the whores.

Peoria is a company town based around Caterpillar Tractor, and has a seedy underbelly that built up to service all those factory workers. It has neighborhoods as bad as any part of Newark NJ.

[GILMORE]

The fact that the expression, "..won't play in Peoria" was not even obliquely referred to in this post is a disappointing failure of cliche-necessity.

[Kaptious Kristen]

I live in DC's food truck desert - we only get 5-6 trucks near my office on any given day (compared to 10-15 at L'Enfant or Franklin Square).

[JW]

You want a desert? Come to the Watergate area. We don't have food trucks; we have food mirages.

[WangoTang]

Sounds like one heck of a plan to me dude. Wow.

http://www.Anony-Net.tk

[EDG reppin' LBC]

So enthusiastic, yet non-sentient.

[Pagan Priestess]

Peoria is a truly bizarre town on many levels...even for Illinois.