Vending bill goes before city today

City Council will hear testimony on the bill but will not vote on it today. After nearly a year of accusations, negotiations, protests, proposals and more accusations, the day has finally arrived for supporters and critics of a controversial vending bill to square off in a public forum. City Council is holding the long-awaited public hearings today on a proposed Penn-backed ordinance that would change the face of vending in University City, banning food trucks and carts on many streets and sidewalks around campus, prohibiting electrical generators a year after its enactment and establishing a Vending Advisory Board to approve vendors for specific sites. Although Council will not vote on the bill today, the hearings should give a good indication of just how far Penn's clout will carry with all 17 members. At the end of the day, Council will decide what they want to do next with the bill introduced two months ago by Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, who represents West Philadelphia. At the hearings, the proposal's supporters and critics will air their views on issues ranging from the ordinance's restrictions on vending locations to when its various sections will go into effect. Critics are expected to turn out by the hundreds and far outnumber supporters. Penn's separate proposal to build five food plazas on its property to hold vendors displaced by the ordinance, if enacted, will also be discussed. Opponents of the proposal will likely urge Council members to adopt amendments that make the ordinance less restrictive, although it is unlikely the proposal will be changed greatly, according to many Council members and staffers. As of 2 p.m. yesterday, 65 people had registered to testify at the hearings, which begin at 10 a.m. in room 400 of City Hall, according to Vilma Diez, a staffer in Council President John Street's office. People are usually allotted three minutes to speak, Diez said. After those who have registered to testify are done, others who want to testify can do so. The hearings "will probably go all day" and play a "very important role" in helping Council members make their decisions on the bill, according to Steve Rush, legislative assistant to At-large Councilman Frank Rizzo. "We've gotten limited information so far," Rush said. "The hearings will let us get all the facts." Last month, six City Council members told The Daily Pennsylvanian that they were reserving judgment until the hearings. One, At-large Councilman Thatcher Longstreth, said he had already decided to support the ordinance. Council will hear testimony from all sides of the issue, including representatives from the Penn administration and the two ad hoc groups formed in response to the ordinance: the Penn Consumer Alliance and the University City Vendors Alliance. During the hearing process today, Council members can offer amendments to the proposed ordinance. At the day's conclusion, Council members will vote on whether to keep the bill alive or strike it down. If the bill makes it out of the hearings, the members have two options: they can vote to suspend the rules, which means they will vote on the ordinance two weeks later; or if they do not choose to suspend the rules, they will vote on the ordinance after three weeks. When the bill makes it to the floor of Council after two or three weeks, members can offer additional amendments. If the proposal is amended further, members must then wait an additional week before it can be voted on again. After the the bill has come to the floor once, and is either voted on or amended, it cannot be amended again. At the hearings, two Penn officials who have been involved with the vending proposal will represent the University: Carol Scheman, vice president for government, community and public affairs, and Glenn Bryan, director of community relations. Bryan said he will give a presentation on behalf of the University. University officials have sought to regulate vending for several years, citing safety concerns and vendors' negative effects on Penn's ability to lure attractive retailers to the area. The leaders of UCVA and PCA, which have spent the past year trying to make the ordinance less restrictive and will be testifying themselves, recruited many people to testify on their behalf at the hearings. As part of its efforts, the UCVA will run a bus from campus to City Hall beginning at 9:20 a.m. and continuing every hour until 1:00 p.m. UCVA spokesperson Scott Goldstein said yesterday he expects many more people beyond the 65 already registered to support the vendors at the hearings. "There will be at least a hundred people there, and hopefully two or three [hundred]," Goldstein said. The UCVA and PCA met with or spoke to "several Council members," according to Goldstein. He declined to comment on the content or results of any of these meetings. Despite these intense lobbying efforts, it is not clear how much the bill will change from its current form as a result of the hearings and subsequent procedures. While Blackwell said she is not sure yet how much the ordinance will change, she expects that it will at least be amended in some fashion. She also said she has been seeking community input about potential revisions for the ordinance. "The vendors alliance and vendors were supposed to submit any changes they wanted to me a month ago," Blackwell said late last week. "I didn't get them until a couple days ago." Goldstein, however, said Blackwell "never asked us for [the amendments] until recently," adding that "she doesn't even return our calls anymore." Also, At-large Councilwoman Happy Fernandez said she thought it was "less likely" there would be amendments because the ordinance "is a delicately negotiated bill anyway." The hearings are the latest round in the controversy over the ordinance, which began last May when Penn submitted its first proposal to Blackwell. In the face of protests from students, faculty members, staff, vendors and other community members, University officials withdrew the proposal in mid-June. After many hours of negotiations with the UCVA and PCA, University administrators submitted to Blackwell a revised version of the ordinance on November 25, leading to a new wave of protests. As a result of the opposition, Blackwell asked the UCVA and PCA to submit their own versions of the bill, which they did on January 12. Blackwell held a meeting in early February intended to hammer out a final version of the ordinance acceptable to all the groups involved. At the end of the five-hour meeting, Blackwell asked Penn officials to draft a proposal incorporating the revisions discussed at the meeting. The UCVA, the PCA and others have accused University officials of reneging on several compromises they allegedly made at the meeting. Penn has denied the accusations.

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