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Councilman Brown Withdraws Food Truck Restriction Bill

Ray Hollister
/
WJCT News

An ordinance to regulate where food trucks can operate in Jacksonville was withdrawn from consideration at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting.

Councilman Reggie Brown’s proposal would require food trucks to set up at least 50 feet away from brick and mortar restaurants unless they’re given written consent by the owner to be there.  Food trucks downtown already adhere to similar rules.

Brown says the problem with his bill was that the language was too ambiguous.

“When I started to look at the proposal I couldn’t answer the simple questions like the point of entrance,” Brown said. “Are we talking about the door, the front door? Are we talking about the driveway?”

That's when he decided to withdraw the bill. But he says the problem is not going to go away.

Brown said, “I want to make sure that again the brick and mortars are able to survive because I’m telling you if they can’t survive we’re going to have a vacant building in our community. And we don’t need anymore vacant buildings within District 10. I have to speak for District 10 now. We have a food desert already. We have restaurants closing up, businesses closing.”

Brown says 90 percent of food trucks play fair; it’s the rest that need reigning in. And, he says, he plans to bring up the issue again in the future.

Lindsey Kilbride was WJCT's special projects producer until Aug. 28, 2020. She reported, hosted and produced podcasts like Odd Ball, for which she was honored with a statewide award from the Associated Press, as well as What It's Like. She also produced VOIDCAST, hosted by Void magazine's Matt Shaw, and the ADAPT podcast, hosted by WJCT's Brendan Rivers.