Photo by Ted Eytan

Following on a D.C. Council session last week in which city legislators approved a chunk of the District’s proposed regulations over food trucks while empowering themselves to tweak the rest, Councilmember Vincent Orange (D-At Large) plans to introduce some modifications next week.

Orange, The Washington Post reports, intends to propose an emergency bill at the Council’s legislative meeting next Tuesday that will loosen some of the restrictions on food trucks operating in downtown D.C. The bill comes after Orange, who chairs the Council’s Business, Regulatory, and Consumer Affairs Committee, met with representatives of industry organization representing both food trucks and brick-and-mortar restaurants.

The proposed food truck regulations, in their fourth revision since the regulatory process began more than three years ago, were met with heavy resistance from the Food Truck Association of Metropolitan Washington over a few key provisions. The trade group mounted widely visible opposition to a proposal of lottery-designated “mobile vending zones” which would be awarded through monthly drawings and would prohibit trucks that do not win spots from operating within a 500-foot radius. The food trucks also oppose a requirement that they only park their vehicles along sidewalks that are at least 10 feet wide.

According to the Post, Orange’s bill would reduce the radius around the lottery zones to 200 feet, and the sidewalk rule to six feet, which is the city’s minimum required width for sidewalk cafés. The Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, which strongly backed the food truck regulations as originally written, says it can live with that.

The Food Truck Association has not yet weighed in on Orange’s proposed alterations, but after last week’s vote, it praised the Council’s move to separate out the proposed regulations to which it was most opposed.

If Orange’s bill is passed, it will certainly be cutting close to the June 21 deadline for the food truck regulations to be adopted.