Letter to the Editor: Clearing the Air about John Street Food Trucks

On Tuesday, March 5, I and a number of other Brookline residents and property owners and registered our opposition to locating food trucks on John Street.  

In the reporting of that meeting and the comments that followed it seems that the question of whether there should be food trucks in Brookline and whether there should be food trucks on John Street have been conflated as if the John Street question was simply representative of the general question.  

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The truth is that I have lived on John Street for 27 years and John Street has always been a RESIDENTIAL street. The issue for the residents of John Street is not whether there should be food trucks on John Street, but whether there should be ANY commercial encroachment on our residential street.  

Yes, we do not want food trucks. Neither do we want mobile bank teller trucks, or mobile nail salons, or any other mobile commercial enterprise. We are the people who would be forced to live with these enterprises and they will greatly and negatively affect the residential feeling of our street and no one who is not a resident of our street has any right to tell us otherwise.  

In the particular case of the food trucks that have indicated an interest in locating on John Street, I am sure that even ardent proponents of food trucks can understand that on a lovely Friday evening or Saturday we may not wish to live with the smell of barbecue or Vietnamese cooking (both of which are great cusines) permeating our homes when we open our windows, and congregations of people on our street.   

John Street is the ONLY residential street the Selectmen proposed as a location for these trucks, and this was done without consulting the residents who will be directly affected by their decision. Nor were the Town Meeting members from Precincts 2 and 8 notified. What right do the Selectmen have to ruin our enjoyment of our homes and environment without our advice and consent? Isn't this taxation without representation?

Keep these trucks on commercial streets or in large parks--period.

Martin Yaseen
25 John Street