A popular monthly food truck festival will likely cease operations at its Rt. 212 location after getting hit with zoning violations by the town, said organizer Marc Propper.
“I think now we’re looking at relocating the festival,” he said. “They’re making it hard.”
The festival, which was held four times at fiberflame art studio near Woodstock, included eight food trucks, a large tent, live music, walk-in crafts and movies. It appears to have been a victim of its own success: a significant number of cars had to park along the road, with pedestrians walking to and from the festival along the shoulder— a dangerous situation Planning Board chairman Howard Post called “an accident waiting to happen.” Once the town is aware of a hazard like that, if it allows it to persist, it could be liable, said Post.
“I really think it’s a good idea,” said Post. “It’s just it’s got to be done properly.”
For the festival to continue at this location, fiberflame would need its zoning changed, the tent would need a permit and the Town Board would have to change a law forbidding offsite event parking. (Attendees would park somewhere nearby and take a shuttle to the festival.) The county Planning Board would also have to be brought in because it’s a state road. Post said even if everything went off without a hitch, the process would take at least four to five months.
Propper, a busy guy who co-owns Miss Lucy’s restaurant and ’Cue on Partition St., as well as the ’Cue food truck, probably won’t have time for all that. “It’s in the middle of our season,” he said. “We’re doing a lot of other stuff.”
Propper said it would be great if someone offered a location with the proper zoning and enough on-site parking. He said the village might be a good location because the Village Board has considered the issue already this year and understands the growing popularity of food trucks (though its food truck law focused on sustained operations by individual trucks, not festivals).
But for now, Propper said it looks the next festival, scheduled for Aug. 15, will be called off.
Every time a business looks to make money (any business mind you not just food trucks) they make it hard! Then they wonder why everyone is leaving New York. Its because they have too, they cant afford to be there because the business every time they turn around are being hit with a fine, tax, or zoning law. So many businesses have tried to move into Saugerties, Woodstock, Kingston and other surrounding towns and they are always chased off. Here soon they are going to be ghosts towns because people have to have WORK in order to spend their money. I was a longtime resident of Saugerties and had to leave my home the place I wanted to spend my life because my significant other could not find work. Its very upsetting and many other young people have left because there is nothing to keep us there. Someday hopefully before EVERYONE has to leave they planning boards will turn around and realize they need to stop making it so hard for everyone to survive.
It’s just typical “let Saugerties grow gracefully” mentality. We’re not growing, we’re dying here!
I am a local planning board official (although not in this town). Planning Board’s don’t enforce the law. We review applications before us. Enforcement of the law is the Zoning Enforcement Officer. And they can only enforce the law the Town Board has adopted.
So if you don’t like a law then talk to your elected officials.
Personally I think a business that is operating so successfully that people are parking on the roadways and walking along a busy State roadway either needs a better site or changes made to the site. Zoning exists for health and safety reasons. We all think it’ll never happen, but the first person who gets hit along that road and then everybody will start with the “how did THEY let this happen?”. Oh the mysterious THEY. Always getting the blame.
Let’s be clear: Zoning exists because “Person A” thinks he knows better than “Person B” what “Person B” should do with their property, and “Person A” got together with a whole bunch of other people and through the miracle known as the “Tyranny of the Majority” now gets to FORCE Person B to what Person A wants.
I agree with Mike. Zoning is only tyrannical if you reject the necessity of planning a community. Person A isn’t a person, it’s the entire community. The entire community’s values are expressed in the laws which the elected representatives decide upon. Person B isn’t a person either, it’s a part of town. The entire community decides how certain parts of the town should look and what should be allowed/forbidden. People buy and sell the property under these rules. They’re not applied arbitrarily to individuals by other individuals in the malevolent way suggested above.
Chuck – so you believe in mob rule. I get it. “If me and enough of my buddies agree you need to do something, you need to do something”. Never mind freedom, it’s all about the tyranny of the majority.
Tell me – how many people do I need to meet you with in an alley to be able to label “mugging you” as “taxation”. Just so I know for future reference.
Look, there’s no place where property rights are absolute. There’s always going to be some regulations. We can talk about ways this town might be infringing on these rights, or applying them in such a way that it’s burdensome for people and businesses to deal with. But simply dismissing all zoning as mob rule? Give me a break. I don’t even know what you could mean by that. Local government is profoundly limited in the laws it can pass by county, state and federal regulations. Much of what it does is motivated by trying to conform to those laws that supersede it. An even bigger motivating factor is fear of lawsuits, a major issue here. There are plenty of protections for individuals who might find themselves unfairly targeted by a town government, especially if violence is threatened, which is what mob rule really means.
But I assume you either don’t know or don’t care about any of that and are an extreme libertarian, in which case you probably find 95% of what any government in NY State does as invalid.