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Two issues came to the forefront last week as the Salt Lake County Council pondered updates to its business license ordinances: Food trucks and prostitution.
Views differed about whether the licensing requirements for mobile-food vendors should include language encouraging them to use locally produced food.
Conversely, there was consensus about the value of using business licensing to help law enforcement crack down on operations serving as fronts for prostitution. The only question was how tough to make the ordinance on landlords whose buildings are used for illegal sexual activity.
After debating those two points for longer than their agenda allowed, the council decided to take up the matters again Tuesday at its afternoon work session.
The updated section governing massage business licenses, said county planning and development services official Brittany Allen, would allow the county to "revoke an establishment's licenses if independent contractors [working there] have multiple violations at that location."
Until now, she added, "if an independent contractor were in violation, they were the only one held responsible. The establishment would just get a new person [to replace the cited individual] and would keep violating laws. We couldn't do anything to the establishment."
Nobody on the council knows that better than Councilman Steve DeBry, whose day job is chief of the Unified Police Department precinct in Millcreek.
"This smacks home," DeBry said, noting that he and his officers have been frustrated that landlords aren't impacted by citations issued to these independent contractors for going beyond what's allowed in legal massage.
How many citations, DeBry wondered, can one of these masseuses' get under this revised ordinance "before we revoke the license of the whole strip mall or the person who owns it?"
Three, said Allen.
"You don't want to revoke a license if it's an isolated event," elaborated Zach Shaw, an assistant district attorney who handles planning matters. "You want to see a pattern of conduct that establishes that the business owner knows what's going on. Three times is established."
Perhaps, Councilwoman Jenny Wilson interjected, but maybe being busted twice is enough. She wanted more time to "see if we're going far enough," given her concern that it could be a matter of years before a contractor piles up three citations. "If we want to make an impact, maybe two" is sufficient.
While DeBry clearly favored providing fewer second chances, he also wanted more time to ponder the number and timing of citations issue, saying "I don't want to mess up what we're doing by being too presumptive and heavy- handed."
One benefit of this approach, Allen said, is that the county can revoke business licenses not just for criminal citations but for violations of state Division of Professional Licensing (DOPL) rules.
The latter are easier to prosecute, noted county District Attorney Sim Gill, since the burden of proof in "licensing [cases] doesn't need to be beyond a reasonable doubt."
As far as food trucks are concerned, the County Council had no problem adopting most of the ordinance provisions the county lifted from Salt Lake City.
"We mimicked Salt Lake City's because they've been in the game a lot longer than we have," Allen said. "Our ordinance wasn't mobile-food friendly so it was difficult to license them."
But Republican Councilwoman Aimee Winder Newton took umbrage with a line encouraging mobile-food providers to get their food from local sources, when possible.
"Since we don't have that in our restaurant ordinance," she said, "we should remove that. I believe in less regulation rather than more."
Democrat Jim Bradley retorted quickly that the council should do just the opposite. Instead of taking the local-food reference out of the mobile-food ordinance, the council should put it into the restaurant ordinance.
"The ordinance doesn't require it, but it sends the message about locally grown food and the value the community has for it," he said. "We [the council] have a longstanding history in supporting that. I don't know why we don't change our [restaurant] ordinance as well."
When the 5-4 Republican-majority council takes the matter up again Tuesday, Bradley will be hoping to sway at least one of the GOP councilmen to break ranks from Newton and side with him.
The rest of the business-licensing revisions are more a matter of housekeeping, Allen said, including decisions to drop a couple of sections.
If the council signs off, county ordinances no longer will have an alcoholic beverage section because ever-changing state laws have made county alcohol regulations obsolete. "We just refer to state rules and definitions," she said. "That's more [the state's] realm of expertise than ours."
The council also seemed poised to do away with a section regulating professional dancing establishments in the county.
Why? There are none.