nothin Vendor Plan Praised; Tweaks Sought | New Haven Independent

Vendor Plan Praised; Tweaks Sought

Michelle Liu Photo

Fontana faces alders Thursday night.

David Yaffe-Bellany Photo

Sweeney at work on Long Wharf.

When I started on Long Wharf, it was the seagulls, the pigeons and me,” Bob Sweeney said. There was no people.”

Now he has swarms of human company — and he asked city lawmakers to go easy” on them.

It’s been over 50 years since Sweeney started running the hot dog van he claims is New Haven’s first food truck. Thursday evening, with half a century’s worth of experience in tow, Sweeney and his son, Robert Sweeney, Jr. took to City Hall to beseech legislators to protect the proliferation of mobile vendors that have flocked to Long Wharf, and other parts of the city, since his beginning.

Go easy on the vendors,” Sweeney, who is 76, said. You can’t go too hard on me because I don’t have much time.”

He spoke at a hearing held by the Board of Alders’ Legislative Committee about an overhaul of ordinances affecting mobile vendors proposed by the Harp administration. The hearing drew a crowd of 50 and ran for nearly four hours, with many praising the city’s move to regulate food trucks and carts more consistently while leveling the playing field” between mobile vendors and brick-and-mortar establishments.

Those set to be affected by the new rules disagreed on some of the details.

The overhaul, which has been in planning for two years, has already undergone a series of changes following input from vendors.

Paul Bass PHoto

Osmany Hernandez and Jesus Mazarieg at work insdie El Cubano on Long Wharf.

And parts of it are already in play: The strip of vendors by the harbor by I‑95 on Long Wharf Drive has seen new infrastructure pop up as part of the revamped harbor.

How would relocating food carts and stands to certain spots affect customer and pedestrian safety? Exactly how fair could the process of allocating site licenses really be? Questions like these, brought up at Thursday’s hearing, held the committee back from a vote; the hearing was continued for another evening before the package would be sent to the full board for a final vote.

Fairness and Consistency”

Vendors occupied front rows at the hearing.

Steve Fontana, the city’s deputy economic development director, gave the committee an overview of the proposed ordinances. He outlined the city’s current situation: The rising popularity of mobile vending has led to an increasing number of complaints regarding cleanliness, noise and air pollution, uncivil behavior, the refusal of vendors to follow current ordinances and a lack of insurance or health permits.

Since 2014, the city has worked with Yale University and Town Green Special Services District to revise ordinances which date back to 2001. The proposed new rules, Fontana stressed, would provide the fairness and consistency” vendors sought.

The new rules would:

• Create four new Special Vending Districts: one on Long Wharf Drive, one downtown, one on Cedar Street by Yale New Haven Hospital and one on Sachem Street by Yale’s Ingalls Rink. These districts would legalize a number of vendors who currently run operations illegally due to zoning restrictions in these areas.

• Establish a process by which vendors who are interested in a location in a Special Vending District apply for a site license every two years. Current vendors in these locations will be grandfathered” into a site at their current location. New vendors will be selected by lottery, and those who do not receive a space due to demand will be placed on a waiting list per district.

• Enable the city to collect two types of annual license fees: $1,000 for pushcarts or stands (which can only occupy sidewalks) and $2,500 for trucks or trailer carts (which can only occupy parking spaces). Vendors at Long Wharf will also be charged $500 a year for electricity costs.

• Through the collection of license fees, allow the city to hire a full-time Vending Enforcement Officer, as well as provide for periodic cleanup of the Special Vending Districts.

You can read the full text of the proposed ordinances here.

Brick & Mortar Vs. Wheels

Wub Tessema of Lalibela argues against the proposed ordinances.

The first member of the public to testify — Nick Yorgakaros, of the Town Pizza restaurant located at 25 Whitney Ave. — set up an uneasy tension between brick-and-mortar establishments and their mobile competitors that would play out over the hearing.

Yorgakaros, who favors the ordinances, pointed out that he pays $15,000 in taxes and $9,000 insurance, plus overhead costs that the mobile vendors simply don’t have to deal with. He said he worries about a rotating variety of new vendors who might pop up near his restaurant during a busy lunch time rush just to cut off foot traffic for those few, precious hours.

I feel for these guys; I know they’re put in a bind,” said Yorgakaros (pictured). But we’ve worked 40 years for this. All we’re asking is, just try to level the playing field.”

In later testimony, Jonathan Gibbons of downtown’s Fryborg food truck countered the idea that the transient operations of mobile vendors meant they had less skin in the game.

Most of us want to expand,” Gibbons, who favors the new rules, said. We want brick and mortar. That’s our goal; we want to do business in this city, I don’t want it to be about not paying taxes or anything like that.”

Gibbons, like many of the vendors who voiced issues with how fair the lottery system and the grandfathering” exception granted to longtime vendors would be, pointed out that certain locations within these vending districts are less desirable than others.

There are definitely some I wouldn’t park in even if free, because I know the business is not there,” he said.

Other vendors found the suggested licensing costs to excessive on top of other bills the city expects vendors to foot, suchas individual $200 fees per each vending employee. Miguel Quinones, who owns the Antojos Criollos food truck, noted the $2,500 fee for trucks, contrasting it to the $500 a year he already pays to the health department.

Quinones also expressed concern about safety in the designated Long Wharf district, suggesting that given the new placement of the trucks amid the street and new bike lanes, people are going to get run over.”

Ingalls Petition

Ingalls Rink vendors hand over petition.

A cohort of mobile vendors who normally set up camp in the parking lot of Yale’s Ingalls Rink on Sachem Street delivered a petition signed by several hundred of their customers pushing against the new ordinances, which would move the 12 or so vendors out of the parking lot (where they had paid Yale $1,000 each a year for permission to use the spot) and onto the sidewalk. They said that when they had originally talked to Yale a few months ago, the university was willing to let them stay in the parking lot. And they asked to be involved in the conversation between the city and Yale.

Fontana had earlier explained that several years ago, vendors had parked in parking spaces on Sachem Street before the city began doing some roadwork there. At the time, the city had asked Yale whether it could accommodate the vendors in the Ingalls Rink parking lot temporarily — a condition that lasted even after the city finished up the roadwork. In conversations over the course of developing the new ordinances, Fontana said, the university had declined to keep vendors in the lot, but said it didn’t want them in the street either.

Fontana, who had been studiously taking notes throughout the testimony, returned to the table at the end of the evening to answer some questions.

An allegation that the vending enforcement officer might revoke licenses on a whim? Fontana dismissed it, pointing out the due process enumerated in the ordinances.

A surplus of undesirable food truck spaces downtown? If they don’t work out, the city will simply remove them, Fontana responded.

The narrow spaces for Long Wharf food trucks that vendors say are unsafe given nearby traffic? Carefully laid out with City Engineer Giovanni Zinn, Fontana said.

He admitted that two big issues remain — the $200 vending permit fee and the question of the Sachem Street district. He said they could be hammered out further, especially with the participation of city Building Official Jim Turcio (who was not present at the hearing).

Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison expressed a concern with the latter issue. Is it even the city’s responsibility to help Yale push vendors out of the parking lot? If you go over there, it’s bad,” she said, citing the density of the area. It will become a safety issue for the people that are going to get food.”

Instead of voting on the proposed ordinances, the legislative committee opted to continue the hearing into its meeting next month, when Fontana plans to be back, with Turcio in tow, to explain the finer details.

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