Smithers Town Council have decided not enough was said on the mobile business issue and will be taking the discussion back to a Committee of the Whole.
Up for talks now is not just mobile restaurants. That discussion was hammered home over months of discussion, and some public outcry.
This time the mobile vendor classification and its rules are being talked about.
Council seems to be trying to be fair in dealing with all mobile businesses.
It seems odd that they’d go ahead with more discussion and not adopting the bylaw, especially in light of the fact that there have not been any complaints regarding it from anyone in the past.
Yet beyond that is the idea that I thought that the whole point was to make mobile restaurant rules more in line with mobile vendors. I imagine there’s an sports analogy using “moving goal posts” here somewhere but I’d rather not fumble through sports terminology.
With the proposed business bylaw, mobile restaurants can stick with their 30 metre buffer from other restaurants, however they will only be able to operate for two consecutive days a week in the same location. The mobile vendor rules already stipulate that.
There are some other small differences. A mobile vendor, it’s explicity stipulated, has to operate from private property with the permission of the property owner. Mobile restaurants don’t have that set out. Although I’m led to believe all existing mobile restaurants do that anyway.
In case you’re wondering on the definition of these things, here they are:
Mobile vendor: “means any person who from a mobile vehicle sells or offers for sale, goods, wares, merchandise, or foodstuffs, but does not included a Restaurant as defined herein.”
A restaurant: “means any food premises, whether permanent or temporary, fixed or moveable, in which prepared food is served to the public in exchange for money or service, or any place to which the public have access for the purpose of purchasing prepared food for human consumption on the premises.”
Cameron Orr is editor of The Interior News.