Duval Street food truck wins another legal battle

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

A special magistrate judge has ruled that yet another city regulatory board cannot control stationary food trucks that are popping up around Key West.

In the latest ruling, Special Magistrate Jeff Overby said that the Key West Historic Architect Review Commission (HARC) was wrong when it denied a certificate of appropriateness for Yebo Island Grille, 629 Duval St., on May 2. Yebo owners Joel Dos Santos and Paul Mills appealed the HARC ruling and Overby heard the case on May 28. The original HARC decision did not refer to the business as a food truck, but as a “metal trailer” that failed to meet regulations regarding compatibility, building detail and materials in a historic district.

But Overby disagreed, writing that stationary food trucks like Yebo and White Street Station, 1127 Truman Ave., fall into a regulatory gray area because the city has not yet written regulations specific to the relatively new phenomena of stationary food trucks. Both Yebo and White Street Station use trailers that are legally licensed vehicles with Florida license tags and registration. As such, Overby said, the state, not Key West or HARC, has jurisdiction over the trailers.

“I acknowledge that the difficult decisions HARC makes are based on the principal of maintaining and promoting the Historic District. But their ruling attempts to bootstrap city code when, if fact, there are no ordinances to bootstrap,” Overby wrote in his decision, handed down July 8. “Unless and until the city of Key West enacts lawful ordinance(s) applicable to these food carts, the standards applied by HARC are too subjective and overreaching and therefore HARC is without jurisdiction at this time.”

Assistant City Attorney Ron Ramsingh had argued the case for the city in front of Overby. He said that the Yebo Island truck, which does not move from its location like other mobile food trucks that travel to their sales site every day, is a structure. He pointed to wording in the city code that says if a vehicle is being “used as if affixed” to the land, then it is defined as a structure.

“A lot of talk has been made that if it has a license plate, that it is not a structure. That is not true,” he said. “[Yebo Island Grille] has licenses as a restaurant. [It] has seating. It is clearly being used as though affixed.”

But Yebo’s attorney, Ralf Brookes, argued that the Yebo food trailer is, in fact, a vehicle with a legal registration tag and license plate. As such, it comes under the jurisdiction of the state Department of Transportation, not Key West.

 

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