Milwaukee food truck zoning meeting Thursday

Thank you, Rob. All right, food trucks are back on the agenda this morning for the Public Safety and Health Committee in Milwaukee. There was a new proposal looking to expand the city's authority to discipline food truck operators. Andrew Amuz was live in the newsroom. Andrew, what could this mean for food truck owners? Yeah, well, right now, the city law says that operators can face losing their assigned parking space for certain city code violations. Each assigned parking space comes with a variety of rules they must follow, ranging from Food regulations to public safety but this new proposal would allow that to happen even if that violation happened elsewhere. So definitely a lot of back and forth and what could happen with this new proposal guys. Ask how would about how would a violation of an assigned parking space be recorded here? Yeah, there's definitely that step-by-step process. First of all, you have to submit a written complaint to the city clerk, then provide pictures and videos. The licensing committee will then review the evidence in an open meeting. Then the committee could recommend suspending access to their assigned parking space. So definitely a step-by-step process, but they do emphasize there being pictures and video evidence to couple that. Okay, okay. I mean, if I'm a food trucker and I have questions, so Andrew, what questions do you think this will raise for them? Yeah, I'm definitely sure that we're going to hear something from them from the other side as well, especially in regards to what if a violation should, if it happens any other place in the city, could that really impact their assigned parking space privileges and also the degree and the measure of what if it's a minor? ... violation versus a major one. How do they measure that? Will that also impact their privileges? We do know that just because there is a complaint, that does not mean that there's going to be an automatic withdrawal or anything like that. But how is that being measured? What safeguards, too, on another hand, what safeguards exist to ensure that complaints are accurate and operators even have the opportunity to defend themselves? So definitely a mix of that, but also I'm really... Wondering about those minor violations. How is that being measured against other violations? Can we ask you this? Are there any discussions over food trucks having happened throughout the year, like including discussion over curfew hours? How did that turn out? Yeah, that was definitely probably one of the bigger topics that we've seen all across the year, especially dating back to early springtime, around the April mark, we had that discussion, and we reported that there were restrictions over curfew hours, and that mainly stemmed from public safety instances, especially in recent shootings. Think about what happened on Water Street, any other of those downtown districts. However, food truck owners sued, and a judge blocked the rule before it ever took place. Effect and council members eventually, especially the Alderman Balman, he eventually ruled that council members do not need to fight back on that. So that was definitely something that was discussed. They eventually repealed it, but we definitely saw those demonstrations happening downtown that push back. Of course, as I mentioned, the owner sued, but then that judge blocked it and then council members did not fight, fight it, fight that decision, I should say. I'll see how this all unfolds, Angie. Thank you. See you soon.