July 18, 2011, was a red-letter day for Seattle street food. The Seattle City Council voted 8-0 to approve “Council Bill 117225 and related Resolution 31307, supporting the Council’s intent to foster a safe and lively food-vending culture in Seattle.” The big change is that street food trucks can use public parking–after securing a food zone permit from the City, they’re no longer restricted to private property.

Sponsored by the Council’s Sally Clark, the intent was “to review Seattle’s rules and figure out how to bring us into modern times.” By “modern times,” presumably, Clark meant “Portland times,” as our southern neighbor’s street food explosion has been making the national food scene the past few years, while Seattle languishes with perhaps 30 new trucks.

Yet Seattle is jumping on the street food bandwagon just as a larger backlash against street food is rising. Neither is the city quite following Portland’s learning curve on management of the street food “commons.”

Even Portland restaurateurs are not uniformly supportive of their zippy new competition, despite the picking-on-the-little-guy opprobrium they incur. (For contrast to Portland’s laissez-faire attitude, there’s Vancouver, B.C., and their more prescriptive take.)

Here in Seattle, that anxious division is embodied in a single person: Rancho Bravo’s Freddy Rivas, who knows from food trucks and restaurants. In a Publicola street-food point/counterpoint, Rivas argued first that existing restaurants should have veto power on who gets to park on “their” street (nice try, Freddy), but also that the city could at least auction off spots, rather than subsidize rents.

This is a nuanced point that restaurant owners don’t always make well. Too often, they couch the issue as street food carts “stealing” their lunch clientele while they are forced to pay exorbitant rents. No, they pay rents because they attract customers who like eating with a roof over their heads; with food on a table, not a knee; and out of the weather. (Just a little stronger and you might say it’s stealing business when someone brings a bag lunch from home.)

At Cornichon, Ronald Holden makes the better point: “Where in the municipal code does it say that a particular category of entrepreneur is entitled to a city subsidy? …Seattle’s getting it exactly wrong, while Portland (with food pods equipped with city-supplied power, water, sewage) seems to be getting it right.”

Seattle’s parking rate “rents” are weirdly untethered to anything like a market rate. (The 4-hour time slots go for $2.25 per hour. For more rules and regulations, see this Seattle Times summary.) When the city is facing shortfalls of millions of dollars, it seems a strange disconnect not to better assess the value of the commercial use of public property.

Mayor McGinn has 30 days to sign the Council’s bill into law. He’s so far proven himself to be reliably fiscally conservative. If he can try to shake down MOHAI, a non-profit, he could at least be as stringent with for-profit operations.

UPDATE: I asked Sally Clark and Mayor McGinn for their perspectives on auctioning the spaces, and they have kindly replied. Same-day service!

Sally Clark: “Oh, yes, this was debated greatly. Freddy Rivas, in particular, made a great argument for an auction system. For me, it came down to the idea that I don’t want to create that high a barrier to entry for a small, new business person. The auction model could give preference to bigger players with deeper pockets.”

Mayor McGinn via Aaron Pickus: “That issue was discussed as the legislation was developed and went through the City Council’s deliberative process. We didn’t support an auction because we wanted to have equal access for all mobile food vendors and also follow Race and Social Justice Initiative guidelines for supporting a low-barrier entry for new business owners.”