“They’re running on an older set of laws,” Bellefontaine Mayor Ben Stahler said.
The ordinances that apply to the trucks were passed nearly 30 years ago, he said.
“It’s our goal to update those to match both the needs of our community, the existing businesses and certainly we want to encourage food trucks to bring in that variety of food,” he said.
Stahler doesn’t want food trucks to hurt local restaurants, he said.
“It’s important that they’re treated the same,” he said.
The city council is considering a distance requirement between trucks and restaurants, he said, to prevent that.
“One distance that was discussed was something in the neighborhood of 200 feet,” Stahler said.
Council members will also discuss a requirement for food trucks to register with the city, he said, “so that we know you’re conducting business here.”
Food trucks aren’t allowed on public property, he said. Trucks now operate on private property with the permission of the owner.
Operators like Tawny Aburto aren’t against regulations. Aburto and her husband own the Taco Bout truck, open in Bellefontaine in the evenings.
“If they just set some simple rules,” Aburto said, “and designate it to a certain area only, that way they’re not all over the street and congesting up the roadways.”
She hopes the new regulations could open up more places for her to run her truck, maybe even on public property.
“It’s a good thing,” she said.
The council will look to other cities to see how they regulate food trucks, Stahler said.
“Right now we’re looking at bigger cities such as Columbus and Dayton,” he said. “But we do need to make sure in a smaller community that they also fit our model.”
The council will discuss the regulations at its meeting in June.
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