After decades of economic stagnation, population decline and recurring political scandals, the District of Columbia is undergoing a renaissance as young people flock to the nation’s capital, making it the country’s fastest-growing city. Among the new residents are Josh Saltzman and Trent Allen, both 25-year-old graduates of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, as respectively, aerospace engineering and classical languages majors. They drove to D.C. last January during a snowstorm in a surplus Postal Service truck to start a business.
The duo spent two months of grueling 12-hour days in an unheated Midwestern garage retrofitting the truck with water lines, a sink, a stove and a generator.
Armed with a food vendors’ license and a perfect score on their D.C. Health Department inspection, they began selling their gourmet barbeque, deli sandwiches and salads from their Purveyors of Rolling Cuisine (PORC) truck to hordes of hungry city workers, joining more than two dozen other food trucks that sell everything from cupcakes to lobster rolls and Korean tacos.
This should be a heart-warming story about how the city is helping smart young people start innovative new businesses in its once-shunned urban core. But, remember, this is the District of Columbia we are discussing.
Instead of helping, the D.C. government has been trying to stomp PORC like a bug.
“Our license allows us to operate on any roadway in D.C. except the National Mall,” an exasperated Saltzman told The Washington Examiner.
“But ever since we arrived, we’ve faced hurdle after hurdle. We’re constantly being harassed. We’ve been re-inspected six times this year, even though we got perfect scores from the Health Department every time,” he said.
The PORC has joined the DC Food Truck Association, which complains that a newly created parking enforcement unit is unfairly targeting food trucks that remain at parking meters past the two-hour limit, while other illegally parked vehicles are ignored.
Saltzman posted a cell phone video online showing a Department of Public Works employee ticketing two food trucks near Union Station, then going right past a silver Toyota parked at an expired meter a few feet away.
That same day, News4’s I-Team reported seeing the same officer pass four more vehicles at expired meters — including its own in a “No Parking” space.
In a Dec. 22 press release, DPW claimed that “if expired meters were observed and no ticket was written, there is a 99.999% chance that the driver paid by cell phone.”
Since October, it went on to say, the new parking enforcement unit has “written about 68 tickets on food trucks, compared to 315,000 tickets” for all other violations.
However, Saltzman says he got about 40 of those tickets, and Basil Thyme owner Brian Farrell says he got more than a dozen. Transportation officials have refused vendors’ requests to meet, and a draft of new food truck regulations written six months ago has still not been released.
One current licensure regulation Saltzman wants changed is a requirement that he personally be in the food truck at all times. “If I’m out of town, the truck can’t go out. No one expects a restaurant owner to be there all the time, taking every order and ringing up every sale,” he said.
He also noted that it took about 10 hours of his accountant’s time to figure out a way to prevent him from being taxed twice. “If D.C. wants to attract small business, the mayor has to encourage companies like ours, which are owned by D.C. residents and employ D.C. residents.”
But instead of heeding such common sense advice, D.C. bureaucrats seem determined to make sure the meter men and meter maids are waiting for hard-working folks like Saltzman and Allen.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
