Business

Gentile calls new food vendor legislation totally unfair

March 8, 2013 Denise Romano

BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP/Photo by Denise Romano

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The City Council passed a package of legislation that would reduce fines for mobile street vendors on Wednesday, February 27, an action which Councilmember Vincent Gentile is calling, totally unfair.

According to the new legislation, the maximum fine for vending violations would decrease from $1,000 to $500; the bill also would allow vending near hospital no-standing zones, taxi stands and within 20 feet of residential building exits.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said the legislation would reduce crowding on sidewalks. Our bills will end punitive fines and keep our streets safe making it a win for the city, and a win for New Yorkers, she said.

Closer to home, food vendor laws have been a hot topic of conversation. Last spring, a group of merchants on Fifth Avenue in Bay Ridge protested the food cart on the corner of 86^th Street, charging that the vendors are not subject to the same rules and regulations as brick-and-mortar stores.

Community Board 10 District Manager Josephine Beckmann said that many brick-and-mortar stores have complained to her office about inequities in violations.

The food cart has really transitioned to [become] restaurants on wheels and regulations have not caught up with the times, she said. Lowering fines for food carts while brick and mortar stores continue to face outrageous fines is really unfair. It demonstrates an inequity between the two. You cant have different rules for different people. If you lower fines for one, you lower fines for all.

From my perspective, this is a double standard, Gentile said. They are actual restaurants on wheels having different standards and subject to different fines than brick and mortar mom and pop shops that line our local streets. They pay those rents, business and property taxes, water and private sanitation bills and are constantly visited by inspectors from Consumer Affairs, Health and Sanitation Departments.

We should be leveling the playing field between restaurants on wheels and mom and pop shops, he went on. Instead, we tipped the scales in favor of restaurants on wheels. Its just unfair, totally unfair.

However, Sean Basinski, director of the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center, praised the bill on behalf of the 1,500 members. Vendors are hardworking men and women who serve their local communities and make this city great, he said. Lowering the maximum fine will be a major step in helping vendors, and we look forward to celebrating the bills passage in the City Council.

According to Gentile, the mayor is likely to veto the bill, but Quinn claims she has enough votes to override it.

However, the councilmember said that he is trying to make things fairer for all.

Gentile told this paper that he co-sponsored a bill that would require police officers who give out summonses to put the permit number of the vendor or cart on the summons, so that when renewals come up, it will be easy to match up the licensee with the number of violations that have been given.

This can better put us in a position of denying renewals if there are a number of outstanding violations, he explained.

Gentile also co-sponsored a bill that would require vendors to have letter grades.

Its just a question of fairness. Many of our mom and pop shops and small businesses are owned and run by immigrants and we want to be fair to them in the business climate, as well as everyone else, he contended. We will keep plugging away, even if we have to wait for a new administration. Fairness is what has to happen in order to keep these businesses alive.