City Council Passes Food Truck Ordinance
The Evanston city council passed the measure after midnight on Tuesday. Evanston Patch boiled the 6-hour meeting down to 344 words.
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Food trucks will soon roll into Evanston, as city council members passed a late-night ordinance allowing the roving restaurants to operate in town, with certain limitations.
Aldermen passed a last-minute amendment at about midnight clarifying the types of signage that can be used on the vehicles.
The amendment says signs must not contribute to blight or cause distractions to vehicles or pedestrians and passed 8-1, with Alderman Ann Rainey, 8th Ward, voting in opposition.
"I think you forget your trip down Howard Street a couple of weeks ago, where there isn't one sign that complies with that ordinance," Rainey said.
Food trucks will not be able to operate within 100 yards of brick and mortar restaurants, and an amendment was struck down that would have prohibited them from operating on certain streets where restaurant owners expressed concerns about unfair competition.
The meeting stretched late into the night, with most of the time devoted to a long citizen comment period in which more than 30 people signed up to speak. Most spoke in support of the library board's new funding model and some spoke about new taxi regulations.
Members of the library board also discussed the library fund model in an attempted consensus building, "non-adversarial" dialogue, in the words of Alderman Judy Fiske, 1st ward.
Much of the discussion on library funding was based on who will be held accountable for spending and who is working in the best interest of Evanston residents.
"What's most important to me is reaching the very residents that can't afford a cup of Starbucks or whose water is turned off," said board member Susan Stone, in response to an alderman's comment that not all residents can afford even a slight hike in taxes.
Discussion on Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl's proposed ordinance about funding for the library was put on hold until the library board has its own meeting Wednesday evening.
Other notes:
-A truancy ordinance was sent back to committee.
-No vote was taken on an ordinance about owning fowl and licensing chicken coops.
-Fire Chief Gregory Klaiber took the oath of office.
Kevin O'Connor
1:12 pm on Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Nothing in last night's Council meeting was more glaring than the outrageous fiction that the pension liabilities, the underfunding of the Evanston Public Library and canard that this Council does not want to raise taxes. Mayor Tisdahl & previous Councils let the pension liabilities soar out of control on their watch. The buck stops with them and not outside uncontrollable factors. Just look at other towns that do not have anywhere near the financially incompetent pension liabilities that occured on their fiduciary watch. The Library Tax Levy has been wrongfully controlled by the COE since the 1946 referendum. The Mayor & current/previous Councils have given Evanston the unwelcome distinction of the most poorly funded library around the local communities. As for not wanting to raise taxes, who used the TIF districts in Evanston for developer welfare & fat paydays for connected lawyers? While the TIFs' are frozen for 23 years, all the other taxing bodies on a citizen's tax bill have raised their respective taxes, since they couldn't access the tax dollars above the frozen equalized assessed value (EAV). Most egregious of all is our elected officials glaring failure to take ownership & responsibility for the bankrupt state that Evanston finds itself buried. Where does the buck stop? Not without outside forces beyond our elected officials control, but with spending beyond our means during the "fat times". Until our elected officials show unprecedented candor, we're lost.