The Jersey City Independent "

Photo: Steve Gold

As City Hall continues to consider potential changes to Jersey City’s food truck ordinance, about a dozen vendors have formed a coalition to push for substantive reform.

The vendors say they are acting out of frustration with both the glacial pace of city government and a sense of stepped-up enforcement from the Jersey City Police Department (JCPD).

The current law, which dates to 1971, prevents food trucks from remaining in a given location for more than 20 minutes, and in the past year and a half, a number of vendors have been loudly complaining that the law is obscure and selectively enforced.

Towards the end of July, several vendors say the police department started visiting the trucks with an underlined copy of the city ordinance in hand, saying they were there to “write every ticket possible” and threatening to start towing and impounding vehicles.

“It’s become really serious now,” says Jessie Dardar, who runs the Louisiana Spice Truck. “They look at us as criminals, I guess, but we are just small businesses.”

JCPD spokesman Lt. Edgar Martinez, however, says there’s been no coordinated effort to put extra pressure on the vendors.

“We haven’t had a crackdown,” he says. “We’re adhering to the city ordinance and advising vendors they have to move every 20 minutes.”

According to Martinez, only four summonses had been issued to food trucks from the beginning of July through last week.

“I’d hardly call that a crackdown,” he says.

Of course, as vendors are quick to point out, the crackdown has more to do with the threat of summonses than actual tickets for violations.

Dardar says the pressures have helped forge what might otherwise be an unlikely coalition.

“We’re all in competition with each other,” he says of the other food trucks. “But we are still coming together. It’s become a mission.”

The fledgling group — dubbed Save The JC Food Trucks — has held several meetings so far, and is receiving support from the Street Vendor Project, a nonprofit that works on behalf of New York City’s street vendors.

“Us working individually wasn’t creating enough momentum,” The Taco Truck’s Jason Scott says. “It’s pretty easy to brush aside one person at a City Council meeting.”

The group has created a “Ten Facts About Food Trucks” document and has tentative plans for a rally outside City Hall on August 25. Participating vendors thus far include the two aforementioned trucks, as well as Cinnamon Snail, Grandma’s Pizza, Kitchen Truck Cafe, Krave, Lucinda Creperie, Nick and Perry’s, QBA Cuban, the Soupman and Taste of India.

‘Three Hours is Excessive’

The group’s efforts are playing out against the backdrop of a potential policy change, which is finally moving along after months of going nowhere.

In May, the Law Department, working with several other city agencies, put forward a proposed revision to the ordinance that would extend the time limit on food trucks to three hours during a four-hour period. It would also add a number of health precautions, following the January raid on the Banana Leaf truck and its owners’ Journal Square home, which found a bevy of code violations that led to the truck’s permit being revoked. And it would tack on a new provision that a food truck cannot operate within 50 feet of any other food truck, in addition to the already standing ban on operating within 300 feet of a restaurant.

The proposal went to a City Council subcommittee charged with studying the issue, but it had some “disagreements on policy direction,” according to Ward E councilman and subcommittee member Steven Fulop, who says the subcommittee sent its revisions and concerns back to the administration about a month ago.

The Downtown councilman says he’s concerned about extending the time limit to three hours, for fear that it will hurt local restaurateurs in his ward, many of whom have complained to Fulop about the food trucks that compete for the Exchange Place lunch crowd.

“I think three hours is excessive,” he says. “You’re going to be hurting the bricks-and-mortar establishments.”

But is 20 minutes excessively punitive? Fulop seems to think not.

“I’m a little bit flexible on the time limit,” he says. “But not much.”

The city needs to be “more proactive” in its approach to the food trucks, Fulop says, perhaps restricting them from certain areas, or designating certain spots for certain vendors.

“There are ways to do it in which you increase the food truck business while not hurting the brick and mortar businesses,” he says.

The Taco Truck’s Scott points out that reforming the ordinance could also be a cash cow for Jersey City.

“I think it’s reasonable for the city to generate some more revenue from the food trucks,” he says, adding that the administration could increase yearly permit fees, or put specific spaces up for bid or lease to raise revenue, as other cities have done.

Scott would be willing to pay more, he says, if the city “gets its act together” and sorts out the permitting process and the enforcement question.

With progress on the legislative front moving slowly, the JCPD’s Lt. Martinez says his officers have no choice but to enforce the current ordinance.

“Whatever the law is, right now, on the books is what the police department is going to enforce,” Lt. Martinez says. “Based on that, we’re going to enforce the current city ordinance until it is changed.”

And that leaves food truck vendors in a tight spot.

“The laws are quite outdated,” Street Vendor Project director Sean Basinski says. “The time limit might make sense for ice cream vendors, but it doesn’t make sense for vendors who make more prepared food.”

And the vendors say that with the threat of ticketing and towing hanging over their heads, their operations are currently limited and they aren’t able to work as much.

“It’s obviously frustrating for us,” Scott says. “We made a considerable investment to operate in Jersey City.”

Dardar says the vendors considered filing an injunction against the city, to essentially suspend enforcement until the policy change was completed. But after bringing in the Street Vendor Project, the coalition has taken smaller steps instead, first asking for a meeting to bring together the vendors, the police and city politicians.

The meeting request, which was sent to JCPD chief Tom Comey, Mayor Jerramiah Healy and Council President Peter Brennan on Monday, also asks the JCPD to “temporarily stop issuing citations” to trucks that are violating the 20-minute time limit rule.

“We want to see if we can work something out,” Basinski says. “Hopefully that will work out.” If not, “there could potentially be a lawsuit,” although, he notes, given the city’s strict existing law it could be an uphill battle.

Instead, it’s clear that policy change is the only workable way forward on vendor enforcement, not to mention figuring out how to handle the scores of licenses that were illegally issued by former city employee Joseph Castagna. Whether the new policy will entail designated spots, food-truck-free areas, limited licensing, a longer time limit, or some combination of these and other measures, remains to be seen as the subcommittee, the Law Department and other administration officials continue their discussions.

‘Somebody is Going to See You as a Threat’

The number of new food trucks flocking to Jersey City in the past couple of years has brought a newfound spotlight to the city’s outdated law governing mobile food vendors. As more trucks have moved in, particularly targeting the Exchange Place lunchtime crowd, local restaurant and franchise owners have voiced their complaints, saying it’s unfair these new vendors are taking business away from them.

“This kind of thing happens time and time again in neighborhoods all over New York City,” Basinski explains.

“These trucks are a new thing, and there’s always a fear of the new thing,” he says. “Each time a vendor goes to a new spot, someone is going to complain about you; somebody is going to see you as a threat.”

But this fear may be unfounded. Basinski says vendors actually bring more life and vitality to a streetscape, which often results in more business for bricks-and-mortar establishments, not less.

“You can’t eat Korean tacos every day,” he quips.

Scott, who runs The Taco Truck, agrees. As someone who operates both a food truck and a recently opened storefront restaurant in Hoboken, he understands restaurateurs’ frustration, but is quick to point out that everyone should be able to coexist.

“I think there are plenty of people to serve in the Exchange Place area — there’s no way that the four or five restaurants down there can serve all the people that work in those buildings,” he says. “I think we offer a valuable service to the community, and I know the community wants us there.”

The argument that food truck vendors are essentially freeloaders “is based on a misunderstanding of the street vending business,” according to Basinski.

While it’s true that vendors don’t pay the high rents that some Jersey City restaurateurs may shell out, they still pay taxes and licensing fees, and bear plenty of vehicle-related costs, from initial purchase to nighttime parking to upkeep. And unlike a formal restaurant, the offerings of a food truck are by definition limited.

“Unlike a restaurant, you are limited to what you can sell, because you have a tiny place,” Basinski says.

Vendors also offer little in the way of traditional dining ambiance, with no seating area, no air conditioning and no alcohol. What’s more, they are by nature subject to the elements.

“When it’s cold out, our customers stand outside,” Scott says. “When it’s raining, they do the same.”

Looking to Other Cities

“The studies have shown that vendors do not hurt store owners,” Basinski says.

In his study of Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market, a long-standing pushcart vendor market that was forced to move by the University of Chicago and the city, economist Steve Balkin found that as soon as the street vendors moved out, bricks-and-mortar establishments in the area suffered a loss of business.

While Maxwell Street featured both food and merchandise vendors, Balkin’s research reveals a fundamental premise: neighboring businesses ultimately reap an economic benefit from the creation of a commercial destination near their stores, as long as there are enough customers. And the number of customers tend to increase when the location becomes a commercial destination — this is the basic logic behind a shopping mall.

Meanwhile in Portland, Oregon, the robust food truck industry has been well-supported by the city’s leadership, which finds the trucks’ contribution to street life in line with its wider planning goals — to “reinforce community identity and character, foster community connections, attract the creative class and encourage knowledge workers.”

Indeed, Portland is so committed to creating a vibrant and flourishing food truck scene, its Bureau of Planning and Sustainability undertook a study in 2008 to study how food trucks impact street vitality and neighborhood livability.

“Food carts have positive impacts on street vitality and neighborhood life in lower density residential neighborhoods as well as in the high-density downtown area,” the final report found.

The Portland study interviewed 63 local bricks-and-mortar business owners to gauge their perceptions of the food trucks. Overall, 66 percent of them reported a positive or very positive perception of the mobile vendors.

While restaurant owners were less likely to want more food trucks in their immediate neighborhood, one restaurant owner’s response clearly echoes the points made by vendor advocates like Basinski.

“Our business does not compete with food carts,” the anonymous Portland respondent says. “We are a fine dining restaurant. We share customers but they are looking for a different experience at different times.”

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