Chamber of Commerce

After getting my haircut this week (at the same place since my junior year of college), I ran into Al Bowers of Al’s Burger Shack. I wished him a happy one-year-in-business birthday and he asked me what I was up to.  I told him we were about to take a hundred people to Athens, Georgia.  And he asked, why were we going to do that? Good question, Al. 

In 1985, a group of engaged community leaders called the Public Private Partnership (PPP), organized our community’s first Inter-City Visit to Lexington, Kentucky, spurred by a visit from leadership from the Bluegrass State the previous year. Since that first trip to Lexington, our community has traveled to eight other college communities, including Boulder, Princeton, Champaign-Urbana, Madison, and Ann Arbor.

I support environmental protection and the mitigation of global climate change. I do not believe that every business should be allowed to do what they what. But there are times when government is in the wrong and shouldn’t kowtow to existing businesses and their supporting organizations at the cost of new business. So to kick this post off I’m going to reclaim a bit of conservative rhetoric. Because it applies in this situation.

It should not be the job of the Town of Chapel Hill to pick which business succeeds and which fails. But this is what they are doing by aggressively regulating food trucks away from the streets of Chapel Hill. It’s called protectionism. The result of the Town of Chapel Hill food truck ordinance is protecting existing brick and motar businesses from competition with food trucks. This is accomplished by charging a fee that is unaffordable to food trucks. The fact that almost no food truck owners will pay the Town fee to provide services in our Town is evidence of that.

Last night while much of OP was intently watching our live online candidate forum for aspiring Aldermen, the Chapel Hill Town Council was discussing proposed new foodtruck regulations. To me they sound very limiting, including provisions that they cannot operate within 100 feet of an open restaurant, that they can only be located on private property, and that the truck and property must both get permits from the Town. Even with these restrictions, WCHL's Elizabeth Friend reported that the Chapel Hill Chamber of Commerce and the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership opposed the change.

This makes it pretty clear to me that the perceived interests of their members is more important to the Chamber of Commerce than the success and sustainability of our local economy.