04/24/2026
Happy Friday!
The Texas Legislature passed new laws regarding food trucks and the cottage food industry in 2025. We were happy to see the state make this move as it takes the liability off the City to regulate and manage. The City of Mount Vernon has followed the new state laws since they were passed. City Staff is working with the city attorney to rewrite our ordinances to represent the state law.
Since September 2025, the City’s policy has been:
• Food trucks can set up anywhere if they have the permission of the property owner.
• Food Trucks at city events are asked to register but are not charged any fee.
• Churches, schools, civic organizations, etc. can hold bake sales, sell BBQ, or other food for fundraisers at any location if they have permission of the property owner.
The 89th Texas Legislature passed over 2000 bills, hundreds of which directly impact Texas cities, with varying effective dates. Why do some cities, including your City, still have ordinances in conflict with this legislation?
Unfortunately, the state did not offer us any of their attorneys to update our existing ordinances. With a few exceptions, we author our own ordinances internally and send them off for legal review before they are presented to City Council for consideration.
Social media is a great tool for you to keep up with your friends, kinfolk, and Walter the Drama King (seriously, look him up, he’s hilarious). It’s also a great way for us as staff to get information out to you, the citizens we serve.
But, we don’t routinely monitor those accounts, or social media in general; we have other duties to attend to (like reading through the hundreds of bills passed by the legislature).
What does this mean for you? City staff has not enforced existing ordinances which may be in conflict with new legislation and we won’t. Why would we do that?
If you have a question about permitting or really, anything else related to City policy or regulation, please call and talk to the City Administrator or City Secretary, 903-537-2252, or send an email [email protected] or [email protected]
We can’t answer the questions you have if we don’t know them.
