The Cody City Council rejected a request by The Pig & The Hog food truck to operate out of the Cody Country Chamber of Commerce parking lot, which led council members to express concerns over allowing food trucks to park on public property.
During the council’s Feb. 28 work session, administrative services officer Cindy Baker said that under the current city ordinance, mobile vendors are required to operate on private property, with an exception for events.
With the authorization of the city administrator for certain events, mobile vendors can operate on public land.
The most recent request for a mobile vendor to operate on public land came from The Pig & The Hog food truck.
If the council were to approve the request, Baker said the city should review the rules about mobile vendors.
“In talking with the city attorney, he said if we’re looking at doing this, we probably should revisit our ordinance instead of continuing to have more and more resolutions addressing this spot here, this spot there,” she said.
City attorney Scott Kolpitcke said the council has passed several resolutions that are an exception to the original ordinance — one for Mentock Park and one for Beck Lake.
If the council approved The Pig & The Hog’s request, it would be a third exception to the ordinance.
“The original rule is basically you can’t use public property if you’re a mobile vendor,” Kolpitcke said. “You might want to consider revisiting your entire ordinance because we’re now creating more exceptions than the original rule.”
The first concern came from council member Jerry Fritz.
“The reason we approved those [vendors] at those locations is because they’re for special events,” he said. “I’m going to start having an issue if we start allowing [vendors] to go downtown.”
Fritz said the reasoning was mobile vendors weren’t hurting any local businesses when stationed on private land, “because the people that were allowing them on their property were paying the taxes and benefiting our city.”
He questioned if changing the ordinance would help the city.
“How does this benefit the city if we start allowing them on public property and allowing them to compete with our businesses?” Fritz said. “We’re going to end up with no permanent places in town. Everybody will just park in our public parking lots.”
Chamber executive director Tina Hoebelheinrich was also not in favor of The Pig & The Hog using the Chamber’s parking lot, citing a “terrible parking issue.”
She explained how high school students are parking in some of the chamber’s reserved spots, which means a few of the chamber employees have to park in the front parking lot.
“That’s impacting parking for visitors,” Hoebelheinrich said. “It would be tough, but there is a possibility of creating a space for [The Pig & The Hog] if that’s the will of the council.”
Council member Lee Ann Reiter said it’s vital to provide access to the chamber.
“It is so critical for visitors to have as easy access as they can to the chamber because they get so much information there,” she said. “There’s a lot of private spaces where [vendors] could go.”
The council chose not to move forward on the issue.
“We already have two exceptions [to the ordinance], and we’re not going to make anymore at this time,” Mayor Matt Hall said.
(3) comments
Allowing a private for profit food truck to set up shop on City property would put the City and the Chamber of Commerce in defacto but direct competition with the fast food franchises and restaurants in town. It also implies favoritism.
Of course none of this is mentioned in this article or came up during the discussion. Recall the furor that was fulminated when the Buffalo Bill Historical Center applied for and got a full retail liquor license, before they added a full in-house food service outlet and even ran a dinner theater for a while. That was quite the brawl at City Hall.
I think the real litmus test would be the City of Cody disallowing food services on public property. Shouldn't those sorts of business endeavours be on private property to begin with ? Then the discussion would be on solid ground and reasons for allowing or disallowing it much clearer. ( Then again , the baseball fields have hot dogs and soda by concessionaires , so....).
A Chamber of Commerce parking lot seems an unlikely food venue to me. Then again , you know what they say...in Cody the food in the museum is comparable to the art in the restaurants.
I can see your point Dewey, and it's valid. But you can also look at it this way...the city is highlighting it's local mobile vendors, to promote their business and the food truck scene in the city. I don't think anyone is asking to park there full time, but I see no harm in allowing the city to promote our local vendors on city property. To your point, though, it creates competition with local establishments. I see no problem with that, but I'm sure the "good 'ol boy network" does. The local food establishments that have been pumping out the same junk for 20+ years should step up their game and not rely on government interference to allow them to continue to be mediocre at best.
What's next? Licenses for lemonade stands?
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