The City of Santa Barbara is looking to block food trucks from operating before 7 a.m. and after 10 p.m., and from parking on a street for more than four hours.
"We do get a lot of noise complaints after hours related to permitted mobile food vendors," Police Chief Kelly Gordon said. "A lot of them have music and other things going, and we do get those complaints. The noise is an issue after the 10 o'clock hour."
The city's three-member Ordinance Committee talked about ways to regulate food trucks and mobile food vendors on public property during a meeting Tuesday at Santa Barbara City Hall. Some of them suggested creating a zone to gather all food vendors together so they weren't spread out on public streets.
Food trucks are popular throughout Santa Barbara early in the morning and at night. They offer an affordable option for breakfast, lunch and dinner for working people, specifically on the Eastside and Westside.
Although no restaurant owners spoke on Tuesday, some of them have complained that food trucks take money away from their businesses.
The ordinance would apply to trucks parked on public streets only. The hours the trucks were regulated presented the most serious point of contention for the committee members. They did not take a formal vote, but the matter will move to the full City Council for discussion.
While law enforcement and city staff pushed for limits on hours of operation, some committee members raised questions about the proposed limitations.
"When I drive around, if I am cutting a corner going home over to the Mesa, certainly through the Westside, I see food trucks out there at that time," Jordan said. "There are people lined up at 10:30 and 11 o'clock at night, and we could talk further about how they are placed, but there seems to be a significant amount of demand for food trucks existing after 10 o'clock at night."
Assistant City Attorney John Doimas noted that the ordinance applied only to public property, and that food trucks on private property would not have to comply with the hours of regulation. It is a matter of public safety, he said.
"There also is an inherent danger when you are talking about 11, 12, 1 o'clock, having people, maybe inebriated, going into the street vending," Doimas said.
Committee member and Councilman Oscar Gutierrez pushed back on the ordinance. He said the elephant in the room was that the problems with food trucks are related to unpermitted vendors, not permitted ones.
"I am feeling very conflicted about supporting these proposed regulations," he said. "To propose more regulation on business owners, it just seems completely unfair, unjust, inequitable and counter-productive."
Gutierrez said unpermitted street vendors are driving business away from vendors as well as traditional brick-and-mortar restaurants.
He opposed the idea of congregating the food trucks into one location and disagreed with no vending before 7 a.m. and after 10 p.m.
"There are some people in our community that have to wake up at 4 a.m. and get to work at 5, and there's no place that is open for them to be able to get food before they get to work," Gutierrez said. "Most restaurants in Santa Barbara close at 9 p.m. It just doesn't make sense to me to limit them to 10 p.m."
Noe Vargas, a vendor, spoke at Tuesday's meeting. He owns El Pastorcito food truck.
He asked the committee to include in the ordinance a prohibition of more than one truck parked on the street at the same time.
"It could create a traffic hazard or create a problem between the business or the property where we might be parking," he said.
He also asked that trucks be able to apply for an exemption to park on the street for more than four hours. He said it hurts the business if they aren't able to park where there are people.
"So, we can park in certain areas where we can benefit from the high foot traffic that we might otherwise not have because we have to park further away because of those restrictions," Vargas said.