Jersey City’s food truck policy could be changing — again.

The City Council will consider an ordinance this week that would change food truck permit fees and overhaul where and when vendors can operate their vehicles.

The new ordinance would amend a August 2019 law that mandated food truck owners pay $200 a day to sell food from their vehicles while parked on Montgomery Street. Food truck owners said the fee, which was subsequently suspended, would drive them out of business.

But the new ordinance would cut that fee by more than half and create 52 “Mobile Food Vendor Parking Spots," each of which would be assigned to a food truck on a yearly basis.

Food truck owners would pay different fees depending on where they operate. Vendors parked in designated spots in “Zone 1,” which includes Christopher Columbus Drive, Montgomery Street, and Grand, Sussex, and Second streets, would pay $10,000 a year, or about $27 a day.

Vendors in “Zone 2,” which covers designated spots in a range of areas, including Summit Avenue, West Side Avenue, and the container village on Martin Luther King Drive, would pay $7 an hour to sell food.

Under the new rules, the city would decide unilaterally where to put each food truck. “The City may, but is not required to, consider preferences and feedback from the surrounding neighborhoods and special improvement districts,” the ordinance states.

Vendors would only be allowed to sell food between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m., except for those on Columbus Drive, which could operate until 11 p.m. The ordinance approved in August permitted food trucks to operate between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m.

Under the current rules, it’s effectively impossible for the trucks to stay in the black, said one vendor near Exchange Place said.

“You’re going to put us out of business,” he said but preferred to remain anonymous. “You’re asking the smallest business in the city to pay $50,000 a year.”

The new rules were “fair,” he said, adding that he had met with city officials to protest the previous ordinance.

The owner of another food truck by Exchange Place, who also preferred not to give his name, said that the new payment rules were much more reasonable. And he welcomed the idea of permanent parking spots. “We can make this our brick-and-mortar,” he said.

“We have to evolve," he added, "which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing.”

Fausto Hernandez, who owns the Dona Maria food truck on Sussex Street, said the idea of permanent food truck spots was “probably more reasonable,” but worried about being assigned to a place with little foot traffic.

“It’s a little inconvenient if they put you in a spot (where) there’s no business for you,” he said.

Some food truck owners said they hoped the new rules would end what they perceived as hostility from Jersey City. Last summer, the city’s Quality of Life Task Force impounded six Exchange Place food trucks. And last October, real estate developer Mack-Cali sued the city over the food truck ordinance, saying the rules conflicted with state parking laws.

Jersey City spokeswoman Kim Wallace-Scalcione said the new ordinance would be “beneficial” for food trucks.

“(It) is expected to reduce the amount of police response made regularly to the area surrounding the chaos and quarreling over spots,” she said in an email. “It will also help the city hold food trucks more accountable to cleanliness and other issues at each spot since they are responsible for their own spot.”

The ordinance will have its first reading Thursday. If approved on a second reading, it would take effect next spring.