Dear Assemblyman Monning, California State Assembly leadership and staff of California Food Policy Advocates:
I am writing to you today to urge you and your colleagues to reconsider the usefulness of AB1678, given the enormous negative economic effect such a bill would have on California's already stressed economy – and the even more important fact that it would do absolutely nothing to make food served on school campuses any more nutritious or appealing to students than it currently is. Certainly it does nothing to limit the thousands of non-food truck food sources that already exist within the 1,500 foot areas it defines - sources that must serve hundreds of times more schoolchildren than all the food trucks in each community operating in concert ever could.
As you are no doubt by now aware, maps illustrating the interlocking 1,500 foot zones of exclusion created by this bill prove that it would effectively ban food trucks in almost all of California's urban areas, as such zones cover large proportions of each city (for example, 80% of San Francisco, and more than 60% of Sacramento's urban area).
The bill, despite its good intentions, would eliminate several thousand California jobs without making available funds for alternative employment for the thousands of licensed, inspected and permitted truck owners and employees, commissary workers, distributors and various support staff affected. Given that so many aspiring restaurant owners have saved for years to use truck ownership as a stepping stone to that goal, an entire entry point for small business ownership statewide would be eliminated, with unknown repercussions, possibly including even more inequality in the distribution of these jobs in the future.
Finally, a quick glance at the nutrition information for cafeteria food at Sacramento-area public schools shows that a large number of trucks here in our city serve food as healthy or, in some cases, quite a bit safer - both in terms of nutrition as well as in terms of food security and sustainability - as that served at schools. I would expect the data in other communities to be consistent with what is apparent here in Sacramento.
Before a bill like this should be introduced, Californians deserve a long and careful comparison of the actual data – both comparing food served at schools and that served at trucks, and data showing where, exactly, students who choose not to purchase food from school concessionaires do actually buy their food, and their reasons for choosing not to eat on campus. Any legislation that does not address those reasons will be unhelpful in actually increasing the health of our young people. I hope that nutritionists and experienced food policy analysts are able to work together to improve the quality of food available to California's young people without putting their parents, friends and neighbors out of work.
Yours,