Tales from the BudComm - Righting a Wrong on Food Truck Licensure - Granite Grok

Tales from the BudComm – Righting a Wrong on Food Truck Licensure

“The people who pay taxes here.”

Or better, Tales from the Selectmen, as last night was a Public Hearing about Chapter 27, “An ordinance regulating outdoor vendors and transient sales,” which covers licensing/permitting fees for food trucks working in Gilford. I originally wrote:

Seriously, $2500 for a simple food truck – that struck me as being VERY wrong and ham-fisted.  In fact, the actual question that ran through my mind was “and who in town manipulated the ordinances so as to use the force of Government to “capture the market”.  This is what politically connected people do – use Government to fend off competition in their industry so as to enrich themselves (or, at the worst, protect whatever profit margins they now have).  Instead of stating “we will win in a competitive environment on the merits”, they turn to a level of Government, in this case, the local one, to be the bulwark against said competition.

Here were the fees that were in effect at the time:

  • Daily: $65
  • Weekly: $400
  • Monthly: $1,500
  • Yearly: $2,500

These are WAY out of line with other NH towns and cities; after all, what IS my town doing to warrant taking other peoples’ money given this current rate schedule? From what I figured out, not much.  Certainly not $2,500 worth of value to the vendor but certainly in line with the answer from Scott Dunn (Town Administrator, who was in office when this fee schedule was put into place)

That line at the top of this post.

Well, that was then and no longer now.  All said and done, the four “time periods” were cut in half to only two.  And the YEARLY  fee now in effect is just about 35% more than the DAILY fee before:

  • Monthly:  $25
  • Yearly: $100

That’s some change, for sure.  It was an interesting time and of course, I had to have my say as I wanted to see this through.  The Budcomm member who had alerted us all about this, Joe Wernig, also spoke briefly when it seemed like things might be going off the rails for the WinniWagon food truck.  The result shows that one person (or even a very limited few people) CAN make a difference.  In my case, it was all about The Proper Role of Government – is it proper for a town to be used as a barrier to entry into a marketplace by established competitors?  I have no connection to the gal who is trying to get her nascent business off the ground. In fact, I just met her for the first time last night and did a quick interview before the Selectmens’ meeting:

 

 

I had hoped to catch her after the Selectmen voted to reduce the fees but missed her.  The WinniWagon will be over in Lakeport, 3-7 pm, later on today, so I’m going to go over and see if I can get that closing interview.  And, of course, be an early customer (paying one – to accept a freebie would be unethical given my position as a BudComm member).

And for those that want to see how this played out, below is the snippet.  I will tell you that I did use “The Proper Role of Government”, “rent-seeking”, and “Who was the economic twit that started this?”.  I was a bit steamed over this whole thing – certainly the rates, which were WAY out of line with anything reasonable for the purpose – a case where the town wanted to make itself an uninvited partner in such a business. At $6 / taco, that would mean sales of 417 tacos sold just to pay this FIRST government bill.  Yup, registering the truck in the town would have been a whole lot more tacos.

 

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

I do have to admit; the Selectmen did thank me for bringing this issue up – you’re welcome!

However, once you’ve solved your #1 problem, there’s always another one right after it – I told them that they should now be going through the rest of their ordinances.  The fees above are only the surface-level symptom of a more foundation problem – rooting out other instances of other possible rent-seeking. Govt should not be deciding winners and losers as it did in this case.  Thus, time to muck out their barn.  Yes, they righted a wrong in this stall – more stalls to go!

But I am happy they changed it from being a profit-making venture to more of a “let’s cover the cost to the town for the paperwork process”.

And because it is the right thing to do, below is a full Selectmens’ meeting, which also included:

  • Intro items
  • The Public Hearing on this topic
  • The resignation of Denise Gonyer, the Town Tax Collector, who is up for being the State’s Register (GOOD LUCK!)
  • Road repair (the road I travel to and from everywhere as it’s the only one in my cul-de-sac; I didn’t even know it was on the agenda!)
  • Sidewalks
  • Library update
  • Admin update

Typical small-town items that are important to the residents

 

>