Fredonia Mayor Michael Ferguson is helping lead a new effort to change Fredonia’s laws regarding festival vendors.
Fredonia has looked at tweaking its laws governing festival vendors for years now. The discussion came up again at a Board of Trustees meeting last week.
Mayor Michael Ferguson has taken a leading role in the latest effort and stated, “Currently, the only outside vendors who require licensing from the village are food trucks,” he said. “New York state expanded its definition of people who are food trucks.”
Ferguson said the “original intent” of a proposed new law was to offer one-day, three-day, five-day, or full-year vendor licenses for food trucks.
“Calling it a vendor law, unless we plan on hiring vendors, doesn’t count,” he said. “If you look at the bulk of the terminology that’s being used in this, it’s being used for food trucks or someone that wants to apply for a permit.
It would allow you as the board to set the pricing and or change (length if the permit) up to your discretion.”
Trustee Nicole Siracuse commented that the new push for changes started because currently, people who sell items from trucks pay a fee. If they sell from a table, no fee is charged.
A discussion ensued about the many different methods people use to produce and sell food at festivals, and who the new law would apply to.
“As someone who’s done this, there’s a vast difference between (festival) producer and vendor,” Ferguson said. “Part of the argument was we weren’t getting a lot of information from certain festivals.”
He said for example, a wine festival producer has to get a tax license, an alcohol sales license, and workers compensation insurance. What the festival charges its vendors is up to the producer and has nothing to do with the village at all. “Unless we say we want a fee added to each vendor for cleanup,” the only person village officials should have to deal with is the festival organizer.
“This is to hold every vendor accountable… whether you’re part of an event or not, you have to have a license from the village,” Siracuse said of the proposal.
Ferguson said that has not been the case before.
“Then vendors were breaking the law, because the previous law put them under the peddlers and solicitors law, and that says they need licenses and they weren’t getting them,” Trustee Jon Espersen said.
Ferguson said it was helpful to clarify the difference between a vendor and a peddler. A peddler is basically a door-to-door salesman, whereas a vendor is in a public place. The proposed law will point out that difference, he said.
Espersen said the measure, as written, is too open ended. Each edition of the Board of Trustees could change fees and length of licenses. “Are we going to have to pass a resolution every time we want to charge somebody?” he wondered.
In the end, trustees agreed with Espersen that the language of the measure needs more work. They tabled it.