On Tuesday, September 2, 2025, the Norman City Council held a study session to discuss updates to local regulations for mobile food vendors, driven primarily by Oklahoma House Bill 1076 (effective November 1, 2025) and a related fire marshal bill. The session was led by Assistant City Attorney Beth Makala, who presented a red-line draft of ordinance amendments. Council members discussed state-imposed constraints, potential opportunities for designated parking, and fee structures.
No formal votes were taken; the session was a study/discussion only.
Okay. All right, we'll go ahead and get started with the city council study session for Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025. We have one item on the agenda, and it's a discussion regarding regulations for mobile food trucks as it relates to Oklahoma House Bill 1076. And we have Beth here from the legal department to have that discussion with us. Hello everyone. My name's Beth Makala. I'm an assistant city attorney here, and I work on licensing provisions, zoning, uh public works matters a lot. So you'll see me for those things. What I have today is just what it's said in the agenda. These are updates in response to state legislation that's effective November 1st. The biggest one is Oklahoma House Bill 1076, which was actually in uh the title for today. There's at least one more that kind of indirectly touches on this that I'll get to at the end. But this is the State Department of Health regulations. Uh the bill added new provisions, had a mandatory uh measures in it. And um essentially now the result of this is that municipalities will be only issuing licenses to uh mobile food vendors in recognition of state licenses already granted, which essentially means we need to verify that they are complying with the state requirements before they're operating in our municipal boundaries. Um we cannot deviate too far from the state laws. It's pretty clear about that that whatever we do has to be in compliance with this act. Um, nonetheless, I find that their provisions are generally in line with what we're doing anyway. So there really weren't a lot of changes that needed to be made. But if you see the red line version that was passed out, it looks like a lot of red, but it's mostly additions to make sure that we're complying. Uh the next thing is that uh food establishment licenses have been defined. Uh, we'll get more into the definitions later, but that kind of feeds into the whole framework of what we're doing here today. And of course, there's general rules um on just operations that address safety, nuisance, trash, um making sure that they're good neighbors. Three aspects that were specifically addressed in the state law that I wanted you to be aware of is where they're allowed to operate. On municipal property, it's what we say they can do. Um, and then on private commercial property, they must have permission. However, as you'll see later, we're not really allowed to tell them in what manner they have to get that permission. They're just responsible to make sure they're not trespassing. Um, and then on residential properties, uh, there are limits to how long they can locate, and of course they must be there with permission of uh residential uh property owner. Consider Peacock. Sorry, not to like just get to the weeds all of a sudden. Well, we go back one slide real quick. Sure, sorry. It was the private commercial, okay. Where food establishments are allowed by zoning. Does that mean that basically a restaurant has to be allowed by zoning at that location currently? Like you couldn't see a food truck at a gas station per se. Uh yes, and so if they're going to be yes, that's what it means. Okay. They need permission when they're in commercial districts of the private property owner. Yes. But they don't have to necessarily be zoned. Again, just the uh the example of a food truck in a gas station. Gas station isn't zoned for a restaurant. I guess it's zoned for commercial. Yes. Just trying to seem like some gray here, right? Right. We actually don't have any zoning provisions that touch food trucks. We only really have um regulations in our current licensure that reaches um fixed food vendors.