Fort Smith Board urges less restrictive food truck policy, goes against city staff on purchasing card bank

Fort Smith Directors opened the door for a mobile food truck vending park in downtown Fort Smith near Cisterna Park and overruled city staff’s recommendation to go with U.S. Bank for purchasing card agreements at the June 7 meeting of the Fort Smith Board of Directors.

From the top of Tuesday’s agenda, City Directors were all in agreement that mobile food trucks and trailers would be good for downtown business development, but there was disagreement with the city’s planning department over how best to handle it.

While the staff recommendation was to start with two open slots in the right-of-way off Towson Avenue, City Directors believed the limited options would not encourage traffic. The Board, which voted unanimously to approve, directed the city to start with at least three open slots in order to gauge interest in mobile vending downtown and drive traffic.

“I haven’t been to a city where there is a food truck park with only two food trucks,” said Director Keith Lau. “The public drives the demand, and decides whether it becomes a destination. My concern is that we’re limiting and too restrictive.”

BROADER GARRISON AVENUE APPROACH
Other recommendations from the Planning Commission were to limit the slots to “self-contained” food trucks only and not trailers. “Self-contained” in the context, according to Planning Department staff member Brenda Andrews, meant a vendor would need to provide their own means of power without cluttering up the right-of-way. Furthermore, the vendor would need “skin in the game,” so in addition to the $150 annual fee, they would need to pay a $100 reservation fee, renewable every two months.

Director Mike Lorenz suggested loosening some of these restrictions, and if instituting the extra fee, giving food truck vendors something in return for the extra charge.

“Why don’t we have an extra amenity available if charging an extra fee?” Lorenz asked. “What if there was a single water or electric hookup for the two spots like you might find at an RV park? That way we can come to our vendors and say, ‘You’re paying the extra $100, but you’ve got a utility there.’ It eliminates the self-contained issue.”

Since “generators are expensive,” Lorenz continued, it would send a business-friendly message to vendors, “who are often smaller owner-operators.” Lorenz also proposed opening the space to food trailers as well.

“We’re trying to promote business growth downtown and want to make sure we’re not over-regulating and making this too complicated for them to do,” Lorenz added.

In addition to the proposed location, Vice Mayor Kevin Settle instructed city staff to put Garrison Avenue as a whole on their radar for expansion.

“We need to look at what it’s going to take to allow us to vend on Garrison Avenue. I know it’s a highway, but is it a state policy or a highway policy that we can’t?” Settle said. “There is no reason we shouldn’t be vending on Garrison. It is our main street, so while I will approve this tonight, I would like to get clarification from Planning and Administration on whether that is a state legislature law or a state highway policy, and let’s work with our legislative groups to get it changed.”

Settle also encouraged looking at the possibility of allowing mobile food truck vendors into other city parks.

‘P-CARDS’
In other business, the Board voted 4-2 with Directors Lorenz and Tracy Pennartz dissenting and Lau abstaining to go with Arvest Bank for the city’s purchasing card program designed to better control expenditures through the city’s various credit card and store accounts.

An interdepartmental group led by Finance Director Jennifer Walker recommended going with U.S. Bank because the company already has a robust “P-Card” program in place, handling the state of Arkansas P-Card program and numerous government agencies throughout the country.

Arvest Bank ultimately won Board approval because of their local presence and contributions to the community in spite of not having the necessary technology in place, such as real-time tracking and fraud alerts. A representative from the company told the Board that these technologies are budgeted for 2017.

Since the city has yet to pick out an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to help run the P-Card program, Arvest could be going live closer to implementation. For Directors Settle, Andre Good, George Catsavis, and Don Hutchings, that negated any downside to Arvest’s lagging on the technology development side.

“I think it’s wise to stay with our vendor ordinance using local vendors,” Good explained. “The reason for that is that we need to be investing in ourselves. Investing in your city is investing in yourself. We have looked at different businesses in our community to help support things financially that others can’t, and Arvest is one of those partners. They’ve invested $50,000 in the Blue Lion and at least 25 other organizations, and every dollar we invest in them, Arvest invests five-fold with us, if not more.”

Director Lorenz disagreed, claiming that the vote set an uneasy precedent since it was a request for proposal (RFP) and not a materials purchase.

“Who’s to say an engineer or a consultant or advisor doesn’t use the same argument in the future? You’re picking someone less qualified for local preference.”

Lorenz acknowledged that Arvest and U.S. Bank were “both quality banks” and that the scoring staff used was “relatively close, but I’ve got to go with the expert recommendation of the department head we hired to run the Finance Department. I don’t know if we’re qualified to make a decision outside what the person, who vetted this has offered, and I think it’s going to result in two huge errors: precedent for local preferences that doesn’t apply and going against a strong, well-researched recommendation. I have to support my department head.”