Back in December, I wrote about Regulatory problems for food trucks in Carolina Beach. So imagine my delight when I saw this morning that, later this week, the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission will be considering amendments to local ordinances “to create allowances for food trucks.”
I have a hard time seeing how any additional allowances could be a bad thing, though it’s hard to say that with much certainty as the detailed documents don’t seem to be available without a login and password (an area where transparency could be improved).
But I think a word of caution is in order, too. The problem with the existing regulations is that they weren’t really designed for food trucks. At the time they were written, food trucks weren’t so prevalent, so they weren’t really on anyone’s radar. As they increased in popularity, they got caught in a code that wasn’t really very well equipped to deal with them.
That could happen again. At Thursday’s meeting, the commission should try to figure out how to reduce regulations as much as possible so that food trucks, and the next innovative thing, can thrive and enrich the local communities where they operate.
