A new food truck proposal in the Louisville Metro Council ditches the controversial idea of limiting sales to designated zones, though the author expects further changes to his ordinance before it reaches the full council.

The revised ordinance, which was on Tuesday's committee agenda but wasn't taken up, comes months after controversy broke out around "stationary vending zones," which were called a "solution in search of a problem" by food truck operators worried that changes would hurt their businesses.

It's the latest development in an ongoing fight that has even found its way to federal court and paved the way for a more open food truck market in Louisville.

The original proposal would have forced food trucks to sell from designated zones, to be set by the city, only at specific times, in order to create certainty on location and carve out special districts for the businesses to vend together, said Councilman Brandon Coan, D-8th District.

"After all the public input that we got back from people, we heard that that was something that people didn't want, and we wanted to figure out a new way to do it," Coan said on Tuesday after the committee meeting.

More background:Food truck owners worried city is trying to drive away business

The new version of the legislation loses the stationary vending zone idea, which he has called the "No. 1 complaint or concern we heard."

Instead, under the new proposal, parking meter "hoods" can be distributed by the parking authority to temporarily cover meters for construction or maintenance work, civic functions, traffic control or stationary vending activity.

Coan said the changes proposed are preliminary and were meant to keep the legislation alive amid a six-month deadline in council rules: "We're still working on a final solution," he said.

"You can see some of the preliminary changes from what is going to be the revised ordinance, that gets rid of stationary vending zones, that really cleans up and streamlines a lot of the rest of the ordinance, and that starts to talk a little bit more nuanced about how parking meters will work for vendors," he said.

"We still need to do some clean up there. It's not final," added Coan, who said he intends to submit another amendment.

The current version includes a provision that limits stationary vending activities to a quarter of all parking meters on a city block.

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Food truck operators and the city clashed in 2017 over a seven-year-old provision that kept the mobile vendors 150 feet away from traditional restaurants with a similar menu.

The brick-and-mortar eateries argued they needed the rules to prevent unfair competition from food trucks able to set up anywhere without the same costs. But food truck operators, two of whom filed a federal lawsuit, argued the regulation stifled their industry. The regulation was repealed in March 2018.

In June, the city reached an agreement, called a consent decree, that ended the lawsuit and required Louisville not to "treat mobile unit vendors differently than other commercial vehicles" allowed to operate in the city.

One food truck operator, Troy King, the owner of Pollo Gourmet Chicken Joint, said in October the proposed zones were a fresh way of telling food trucks where they can sell food. He was one of two food truck vendors to file the 2017 lawsuit against the city over its previous rules.

"I thought everything was dealt with and done after the consent decree," King said in October. "No citizens we've heard from are complaining about the existing rules."

And Leah Stewart, the president of the Louisville Food Truck Association, said at the time that she was worried about the city setting the locations of the zones.

"If they are outside of the areas where people are, we will die. We will go out of business," she said.

A revised ordinance, potentially with Coan's amendment, could be discussed at the next meeting of the council's public works committee in two weeks.

Previously:Food truck owners worried city is trying to drive away their business

Darcy Costello: 502-582-4834; dcostello@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @dctello. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/darcyc.