By Ron Zeitlinger | The Jersey Journal
Jersey City says there are too many portable food vendor licenses and former health inspector Joseph Castagna has been charged with issuing them and the pocketing the money.
City officials say that there should only be 175 licenses issued for businesses like food trucks and dirty-water hot dog carts. Right now officials are guestimating that there are about 320 of them out there.
We know why any municipality might want them limited. Restaurants and fast-food joints — with much larger overhead costs — probably don’t like the competition, and municipalities could argue it’s hard to attract new food businesses when there is so much competition out there already.
On the flip side, are they really competing against one another? Is someone passing up Casa Dante because they found a food truck that sells meatball sandwiches on the to the restaurant?
And wouldn’t more licenses bring in more money to municipalities?
http://www.nj.com/hudson/voices/index.ssf/2011/06/daily_poll_should_municipaliti_7.html
