MIDDLETOWN, DE – A new law passed by Middletown’s Town Council requires vendors who want to operate a street-side food cart to go through a more formalized process to receive approval.

In order to get a conditional use permit, vendors will now have to meet standards set by the state Division of Public Health and face the planning and zoning commission before facing Council.

The law also requires a vendor to be able to be able to dispose grease and waste properly from their food cart and have written permission from the owner of the private property where the cart would be located.

Mayor Ken Branner says the new law clearly defines what vendors will need to show in order to get conditional use approval.

“What we really wanted to do was make it a process, where each one of the vendors comes before Middletown and explain exactly what it is they’re going to be doing and then we’ll issue a conditional use for that vendor,” he says.

Branner says the new law is something that other cities and towns have utilized and doesn’t drastically change how vendors would apply for the permit. Comments at an October public hearing led to Council removing language that referred to food cart vendors not paying local taxes.

The town currently has one vendor who operates a food cart with the conditional use permit. He would be unaffected by the new law.

“It’s not anything that other municipalities haven’t done, we want to be consistent with what others do. We listened to the public and we just want to give a process to issuing conditional use permits, that’s really all it is,” he says.

Find the entire article by Tom Lehman at wdel.com <here>