Albuquerque food truck owners can breathe a sigh of relief now that they will not have to pay hundreds more in permit fees.
After receiving pushback from multiple food truck operators about the sudden increase in annual permit fees from around $150 to $900, city officials are dropping the fees back down and issuing refunds.
During the City Council meeting Wednesday, Mark DiMenna — a deputy director for the Environmental Health Department — told councilors that the 12 food truck owners who paid the $900 fee are being refunded. The new fee will be a quarter of the recently increased fee.
“If you were looking at paying $900 a few weeks ago, you would be looking at $225 now for your annual permit fee,” DiMenna said.
The fees were included in the Food Service and Retail Ordinance which was passed by councilors in May and went into effect in August.
DiMenna said the fees were set to be equivalent to a restaurant and are applied based on what the food trucks are serving. For instance, those who serve raw produce or meat may have higher fees than snow cone vendors.
The city has a total of 384 food truck permits, according to the Environmental Health Department.
He said the original fees were established in the 1980s when mobile food establishments were “probably a hot dog cart outside of a nightclub.”
“We hear loud and clear that there are concerns about the fees and we’re certainly open to doing whatever is in everyone’s best interest to move that forward,” DiMenna said.
At the last council meeting, food truck owners told councilors and city officials that the fee increase may cause small businesses to shut down — which caused Councilor Klarissa Peña to try to stop the fee increase when the council convened Wednesday night.
Peña said that the Food Service and Retail Ordinance did not specifically say “food truck” which is why she was unaware of the fee increase. She proposed a moratorium that would temporarily suspend the legislation for further consideration but quickly called to withdraw the proposal after hearing that the administration is taking action to fix the issue.
Councilors voted unanimously in favor of the withdrawal.
Nonprofit journalism like this depends on readers like you. This story is supported by City Desk ABQ, a nonprofit newsroom project of Citizen Media Group supporting news and politics coverage that inspires readers to participate in local democracy. Become a supporter to keep City Desk free and support nonprofit, independent journalists covering politics and policy f0r New Mexico newsrooms.