Athens mobile vending spots are set to change soon due to an ordinance that will include with a monthly fee instead of a yearly fee to make mobile vending easier for street vendors.
The ordinance will change the fee period from annual to monthly. The fee will be $125 per month, said Samuel Crowl, city councilman.
The ordinance will also allow vendors to choose on a monthly basis whether they will be vending. Vendors will be able to skip vending during the winter months or times when there is no business, according city councilman Pat McGee.
“Member (Pat) McGee and I have worked on this issue with two purposes in mind, to open up unused spaces to the general public as well as to help improve the vending situation for vendors,” Crowl said.
There are eight vendor spaces that have been reserved for all of 2018, Crowl said. That means the East Union parking spaces are not available to the general public from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m., even when a vendor is not using their reserved space.
Code Enforcement would be responsible for making sure the meters are changed when there is no reservation, so that the meter would be open to the public, McGee said. The current ordinance would allow vendors to reserve a spot for a year rather than a month. That reservation would currently expire on Dec. 31, he said.
“It’s hard to be uptown on a regular basis, it’s easy to get trapped,” said Brandon Buckley, owner of A Town Pies and Fries. “If time was extended, vendors could sell more.”
