Psst Madelaine Amee over here!
...as we were saying, about food trucks in general in the other thread about lobster rolls:
Food trucks typically kick commercial parking fees and permit fees to the communities in which they are given permission to park and serve their customers.
The ones that are usually exempt are the traditional "canteens" that show up in the parking lots of corporate office buildings, that provide hotdogs, sandwiches, soda, cigarettes, the morning newspaper, etc. But that's because those trucks don't typically park on a public street and the service they provide is exclusive to those at the building where they park, before moving on to the next building in their daily rounds.
Part of the problem with a regular rotation of food trucks AT the town square is the noise. They have to have generators, if they don't have access to the public electric system. Generators are noisy, and the cables connecting to the public electric systems can be dangerous to maneuver around, as a customer.
If you're in the middle of the square (as a pedestrian) and there's one truck on one side of one street, it's not going to be a big deal. But if you're trying to enjoy dinner at the restaurant directly behind where the truck is parked, you're going to want to eat inside.
If there are a dozen food trucks all parked around the square, the generators needed to run them would produce a lot of noise. In a carnival atmosphere it's not a big deal, it's expected.
If you had a "food truck night" once every other week, at each square, that might work great. You could even coordinate it to run the same time as vendor days, so the square is closed to traffic anyway. You could move the vendors that have only tables, tarps, and chairs for equipment, onto the squares themselves. And that would leave plenty of room for trucks on the curbside of the inner square - which would also mean no food trucks parked directly in front of any restaurant.
You could invite popular trucks to come as part of a regular schedule, and have "featured trucks" rotate in and out of the schedule. This gives everyone a chance to try new things each time, while still being able to enjoy the "same old" that they know and love.
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