Milwaukee’s controversial food truck curfew for the Water Street entertainment district is doomed. And, according to one alderman, so is the Water Street entertainment district itself.
Friday morning, members of the Common Council’s Public Safety and Health Committee voted to repeal the 10 p.m. food truck curfew that it passed in April, reverting the curfew back to 1 a.m. The 10 p.m. curfew was the subject of outcry from food truck owners and the public. It was also the subject of litigation and was blocked by a judge. It was never actually enforced.
So, pending likely support from the full Common Council and Mayor Cavalier Johnson, the 10 p.m. Water Street food truck curfew that never went into effect is dead.
During Friday’s meeting, a frustrated Ald. Bob Bauman threw in the metaphorical towel on not only the curfew, but Water Street as a whole. Bauman cited the continued disorder from underage visitors—attracted to the area as if by a magnet, he said, by late-night food trucks—and the lack of police resources to deal with that disorder. “I think the Water Street entertainment district is going to go away as we’ve known it,” he said, “and frankly, maybe that’s a good thing.”
Here are more of Bauman’s thoughts:
“Basically it boils down to a police problem. We understand the police department has conflicting demands on their resources. We understand they prioritize and probably should prioritize our neighborhoods where there is a much higher propensity of actual violent crime in the form of non-fatal shootings and homicides and robberies. That’s a command staff decision. We can’t control how they deploy their resources. But basically, absent a substantial change in resource deployment in the entertainment districts, I think the days are numbered for the Water Street entertainment district as we’ve come to know it. I think that should be acknowledged because we just don’t have the police resources to provide the adequate staffing to both patrol and hold people accountable for misbehavior. It’s just that straightforward in my view.
“And so, regulating food trucks, regulating this, regulating that, closing the street, opening the street, adding lights, I think that’s all essentially rearranging chairs on the Titanic. Because ultimately, absent a strong law enforcement presence in the summer—on hot, warm Friday and Saturday nights—absent a strong, strong presence, much stronger than what’s been deployed to date, I think the Water Street entertainment district is is going to go away as we’ve known it, and frankly, maybe that’s a good thing. All it is is concentrated drinking and disorder, and maybe it’s a good thing that it does go away, given the pathology that seems to be embedded there now.”
Ald. JoCasta Zamarripa voiced her frustration with food truck policy in general
“Food truck policy has been the most challenging thing to work on as an alder,” Zamarripa said. “I will admit, before I got on the Common Council, I did judge the alders in the city because I thought, why aren’t they doing anything more progressive on food truck policy? They really should be doing something other than just food truck street bans that my predecessor Bob Donovan often did. So I thought when I get in, I’m going to do something progressive around food truck policy. And I got in, and it is the hardest thing to advocate for. The press comes down on us hard, the public comes down on us hard.”
Developer Kendall Breunig, speaking on behalf of nearby Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE), suggested an alternative zoning solution to the food truck/Water Street issue. Breunig has been a proponent of the 10 p.m. curfew.
“The food trucks themselves are not the problem. It’s the people that gather around them,” Breunig said. “MSOE has 3,000 students there. We have 1,500 students roughly that live on campus. Three hundred of them live on the corner of Water and Juneau. It becomes a matter of priority. Is it more important to be concerned about 300 students, or the rights of food truck operators to be able to sell later at night?
“The in-between is Type 2 Limited Density [Zoning],” he continued. “Right now, anyone can pull up, park, and their customers make a mess, bottles everywhere. MSOE, two years ago, was cited for not maintaining their grass where all the food trucks park. They put in new sod. It didn’t even last two months because the food trucks have no responsibility once they close up at 1 a.m. So if it went to Type 2, individual food truck operators would be licensed for a particular spot, they could be held responsible for cleaning up around their spot, and you have control. If there are incidents, you know who to go to, and you can limit the number of vehicles there.”
Breunig’s involvement in the issue has been called into question due to his development interests and his ownership of the Aperitivo restaurant in the Third Ward, south of Water Street. To clarify that he was speaking for MSOE on Friday, he briefly donned an MSOE hat.
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