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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

City council expected to vote on controversial food truck legislation

The year’s last pieces of legislation for the Bloomington City Council include two ordinances that regulate food trucks and other mobile vendors in the city.

The first ordinance codifies food trucks and other mobile vendors as businesses and eases the process to obtain operating licenses. The second ordinance regulates how these vendors are to operate their businesses.

The second ordinance has caused controversy among food truck owners, mobile vendors and the council. Many amendments have been made since the original ordinance was proposed in November.

The ordinances will be up for a vote at tonight’s meeting.

Previous versions of the ordinance created districts in the downtown area and limited the number that could operate there at a time. At the last city council meeting, those limits, as well as caps on the number of operating licenses the city could issue, were removed.

The council has expressed interest in regulating the loudness of generators, but there is still disagreement. An ordinance amendment stated that a generator could not be louder than 70 decibels at four feet but was rejected when the council could not agree on an acceptable sound limit.

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