Food Trucks Serve Up Fight

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Two years ago, food trucks famously clashed with restaurants and local politicians over where they could park on the Miracle Mile.

Today, that seems like a grammar school food fight. An increasingly organized food truck industry is waging a campaign across large swaths of Los Angeles County combating regulations in several cities at a time.

A trade association of gourmet food trucks has pored over the municipal codes of all of the county’s 88 cities since last year in order to identify regulations it finds too onerous. It is pressuring cities to remove or replace them, and in some cases has gone a step further, launching legal fights with at least five cities since July.

“The goal is to take illegal laws off the books and at the same time show that food trucks can be incredibly beneficial to cities,” said Kevin Behrendt, an attorney representing the food trucks.

The group, the Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association, represents about 150 trucks and is fighting regulations of all kinds. Some are decades-old bans aimed at ice-cream trucks, while others are newly passed restrictions on the time and place that a food truck can do business.

One fight, in Monrovia, has already led to an agreement by officials there to repeal food truck regulations. In other cases, the association has taken a softer approach, partnering with cities to craft more lenient ordinances. It appears the industry is seeking ordinances with no time restrictions on sales, minimal place restrictions and limited licensing.

But some cities say the group is going too far. Officials in West Hollywood recently replaced an old mobile vending law with a much more generous one, only to be hit with a lawsuit anyway.

“They’re being aggressive in order to make a point,” said West Hollywood City Attorney Mike Jenkins. “They want to be free of regulation. They want to operate where they want, when they want, without regard for municipal regulations.”

Pushing back

Behrendt said that the effort started because food trucks, which have been growing in number and now operate in about 60 to 70 cities across the county, were being ticketed for violations they weren’t aware of. With laws varying widely from city to city, there was a need to educate truck owners and to push back against any problematic regulations.

Many cities have older laws governing mobile vending, restricting the time that a truck can remain parked in a public street to as little as 10 minutes, or in some cases outright banning them. In some cities, the laws weren’t enforced until gourmet food trucks started drawing complaints – sometimes from local businesses and restaurants that didn’t want competition.

“Somebody will complain, ‘Hey, there’s a food truck down the street from my business,’ and will end up calling code enforcement, where someone will look into it and say there’s a law against it,” Behrendt said.

The group has filed lawsuits challenging laws in Arcadia, South Pasadena, El Segundo, City of Industry, West Hollywood and Monrovia citing a section of the state vehicle code regarding mobile vendors. The state code trumps local ordinances, and the mobile vendors contend that the code prohibits bans on food trucks and only allows for local regulations that protect public safety and health.

In Arcadia, for example, food trucks had steered clear of the city due to an old ban on mobile vending meant to ease traffic from the once-huge crowds at the Santa Anita Park racetrack. The city passed the ban in the 1950s to stop vendors from selling to people coming and going from the racetrack – crowds that have long since thinned.

“It never was updated,” said Jason Kruckeberg, the city’s development services director.

Arcadia city staff had been working on a new ordinance when the city was hit last month with a lawsuit challenging the old ban. Kruckeberg said the city received one telephone call from the trade association asking whether there was a ban and then was hit with the lawsuit. He said there was no effort from the group prior to the lawsuit to negotiate a new ordinance, but the city has since been contacted by the trade group to discuss one.

However, talks didn’t get very far in West Hollywood. After a shaved-ice truck got a ticket there last year for violating an old ordinance that prevents mobile vendors from parking on city streets for more than 10 minutes, the trade association complained.

Behrendt said the group made its demands clear, but according to City Attorney Jenkins, the association refused further discussion until the old law was repealed.

Officials replaced the old law with a more generous one that allows food trucks to park for one hour without a permit, and for longer periods with a permit. The association sued in July over the new restrictions, which Jenkins vowed to defend.

Another city that tangled with the association was Monrovia. In 2010, it passed a ban on food trucks in certain neighborhoods. The association sued, and last month the case settled when the city agreed to repeal the ban, a Monrovia spokesman said.


Other approaches

Behrendt said the trade association has taken a consistent approach.

It is not bothering to talk to cities that have bans and is suing them outright. It also is suing cities after negotiations to develop less onerous regulations have not been successful.

However, discussions have yielded results in some cities without litigation. The trade association, he said, has worked with or is working with officials to get new laws in Manhattan Beach, Long Beach, Burbank, Torrance and Santa Monica.

Manhattan Beach is being held up as a model city by the industry. The trade association approached city officials last year to do away with a law preventing trucks from parking on the street for more than 10 minutes. Officials sat down with the association to discuss what a fair law might look like and also heard from downtown eateries opposed to the food trucks. The city passed an ordinance in February that allows food trucks to operate as long as they stay away from schools, pick up their trash and obtain a business license.

“It was to modify the existing (law) which was overly restrictive to what was acceptably restrictive,” said Associate Planner Eric Haaland. “There were certainly concerns by business owners and some of the public in general.”

As for the lawsuits, which are still in their early stages in Los Angeles Superior Court, those cities with outright bans will find it difficult to defend their laws in court, said Dale Goldsmith, an attorney who reviewed the cases for the Business Journal. Even those with just time and place restrictions, such as West Hollywood, will need to prove there are clear public safety and health reasons for their regulations – which can’t be driven by a desire to protect brick-and-mortar restaurants.

“Obviously it’s up to the court to make the final decision on at what point do you put so many restrictions on vending that it is tantamount to outright prohibition,” he said. “Underlying all this may be (the fight) for patrons’ dollars. Money is often at the bottom of many of these zoning and land-use disputes.”

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