Food truck regulations coming into focus

LANSDALE » A new set of regulations for food trucks operating in Lansdale is coming into focus.

Chris Kunkel, the borough’s manager of Code Enforcement and Community Development, gave an update Wednesday night on his department’s efforts to draw up new regulations for food trucks in town.

“Currently, we don’t have any regulations specifically for food trucks, as far as borough ordinances are concerned,” Kunkel said.

“That puts us in a difficult situation. We can’t really approve them, and it makes it difficult sometimes to enforce certain things where a

problem develops,” he said.

Kunkel and Borough Manager John Ernst announced last month that they were looking into similar food truck codes for other nearby municipalities to see how those are handled, resuming a discussion started in 2017, and gave council’s code enforcement committee an update Wednesday night.

“There’s two different avenues to this, if you will: you have food trucks that might want to be located on private property — what zoning districts would be appropriate for that, what kind of dimensional and other requirements would be layered on top of that?” Kunkel said.

“And what about food trucks on the public rightof-way, on public streets? How would that get handled?” he said.

Internal talks are still ongoing in consultation with the borough’s solicitor, Kunkel said, and an outline of a new code could be ready for the code committee as soon as September.

Councilman Rich DiGregorio asked if the code would also regulate roving vehicles like the ice cream trucks currently driving through borough neighborhoods each afternoon, and Kunkel said it would not.

“This came up in our meetings too: suppose you’re having a kids’ event, and you have a hot dog

stand. This would not apply to that type of thing,” he said.

“This is all decisions that are going to lie with you all, but no, we did not have anything in our discussions that would regulate the ice cream trucks, or a wedding type event on private property,” Kunkel said.

The Montgomery County Health Department currently inspects food trucks and issues certifications for those that pass, and Kunkel said the borough code would likely lean on that county proof of inspection instead of seeking anything additional.

“We could say ‘Where is your health department certification?’ This ordinance would give us a check mechanism, that when they came in to get their permission, a permit from us, we could then ask for that documentation,” he said.

The new codes for food trucks on private property would likely take the form of an amendment to the borough’s current zoning code, to treat a food truck as an accessory structure. The public property rules and regulations could either be included in the current special events ordinance, or added as a separate standalone ordinance. Since the 2018 event season would be nearly over by the time the ordinance is vetted and passed by council, the new rules would likely take effect at the start of 2019.

“We would look to start fresh, like on January 1st, and then all of that season, moving forward, would

then fall within this ordinance,” Ernst said.

Kunkel said part of the new code could also be administered by the police department, under a transient vendor license that would be good for only events instead of a regular appearance.

“That seems to cover the people who come in for the Mardi Gras parade, and walk up and down selling the balloons, and soft pretzels, things like that,” Ernst said.

“We would look to work with the police department for a transient license for those type of vendors. I’d hate for a guy selling pizza to set up outside Main Street Pizza,” he said.

One food truck recently applied to the code department to set up permanently in town, Kunkel said, but the food truck use was not allowable under current codes in the zoning district where they wanted to go.

“We have no vehicle, no pun intended, no ability to approve this,” he said.

Code committee chairman Jack Hansen said he was “not a big fan of overregulation,” but food trucks may be an area where regulation is needed to protect the public.

“I’d like people to pretty much be able to enjoy themselves, as long as they’re not infringing on their neighbors. But this one here is a public safety issue,” Hansen said.

Kunkel said the drafts he has reviewed so far from other municipalities have tended to run several dozen

pages, but he is hoping to pare down a draft to just a few pages of either a new ordinance or modifications to current ones.

“Simple and effective, I guess, is the goal,” he said.

“But also allowing flexibility

for us to kind of make decisions on the fly, if necessary,” Ernst added.

Lansdale’s borough council next meets at 7 p.m. on Aug. 15 and the code enforcement committee next meets at 8 p.m. on Sept. 5,

both at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine St. For more information or meeting agendas and meeting materials visit www.Lansdale.org or follow @LansdalePA on Twitter.