Burlington Council Encourages Food Truck Festival to Move Around the City
MY TAKE:Council has an obligation to balance the needs of our bricks and mortar taxpaying businesses with that of an external business event provider. We welcome the Food Truck Festival in another location in the city in one of our beautiful parks of community hubs, where it does not negatively impact the businesses within the boundaries of our local Business Improvement Areas (BIAs). These businesses face additional costs others don’t, including a parking levy and beautification/event fee. We’ve heard loud and clear from our downtown businesses this festival has been adding significant pressures and impacts to their operations. Many them are still recovering from the fallout of the pandemic, that we have heard will take approximately 5-7 years.While Spencer Smith Park is certainly a gem in our city and I understand the draw, the key is the operation within a BIA boundary. We also need to look to spread the joy of a variety of festivals across our city. We’ve discovered there’s an appetite for this festival in Burlington and I believe that wherever it ends up in our city, people will head there to attend. There is a lot of opportunity to make this a better festival going forward and I truly hope the organizers will continue working with our City staff to find a suitable alternative location.This issue has also brought to light the need for infrastructure in our other parks so that they can host a variety of events or different shapes and sizes.
The critical piece in this situation is that it’s not a level field between a business in a designated business improvement area (BIA) and a three-day food event. The reason for that is if you’re a bricks-and-mortar business in a BIA, you have additional fees, on top of property taxes, you must pay that a temporary event does not – for example, a parking levy that helps build the parking to support all businesses in the BIA, as well as those who attend temporary events nearby. Another is a BIA levy that is used for marketing, beautification of the area and events held and hosted by the BIA to support local businesses.Temporary events pay a fee, but do not contribute to property taxes, do not pay a levy, and are able to make use of all the resources BIA businesses pay for.Additionally, there is no where else in Ontario that has allowed this festival to be held in their BIA – that is an important distinction too.Our BIA businesses have welcomed and embraced other events where food is a side component and not the main draw, for example, the Lakeside a la Carte – Burlington event where all proceeds go to charity and it features food from local restaurants.Burlington City Council has not cancelled this event, in fact, we’re encouraging its organizers to work with our City staff to move around the city so that more of our residents can enjoy it. We’ve repeatedly heard from our young folks that they want more arts and cultural events. The trouble is Spencer Smith Park is so booked up, that we’ve had to turn away those types of events because there are no more available weekends. Council’s decision helps open up Spencer Smith Park so that additional arts and cultural events that our residents are asking for can be hosted there.Please see below the full approved motion, related staff report and appendices, and some background on this file.APPROVED MOTION:
- Direct the City Manager and the Manager of Festivals & Events to decline future Burlington Food Truck Festival applications for Spencer Smith Park effective 2024; and
- Encourage the event organizers to continue to work with staff to find a suitable location in Burlington.
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To read the staff report and related supporting documents, please click/tap the links below: