Cortez council adopts food-truck licensing rules

Cortez City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday night to create a licensing process for mobile food vendors, finishing a rewrite of the city code that it set in motion earlier in the month. Nobody from the public spoke at the public hearing.

Ordinance No. 1371, Series 2026, passed 7-0 on second reading. It rewrites Chapter 15, Article IX of the city code so that a food truck or trailer operating in Cortez applies once a year for a Mobile Food Vendor License, proving a city sales tax license, good standing with the state, a Montezuma County Health Department inspection and — if food is cooked in the vehicle — a fire inspection. Vendors get a card to display, and the ordinance adds a process for repeated violations.

Graphic: Cortez Current. Source: City of Cortez agenda packet and council recording, October 27, 2026

Staff told council the request came from the parks and recreation department and the police department after the 2025 Fourth of July celebrations, when, the staff memo says, vendors repeatedly failed to comply with staff direction and park regulations. Without a license, the community and economic development specialist said, the city’s only recourse against a vendor is blunt — and the city has none of the routine enforcement tools a license would give it.

City Manager Drew Sanders said the difference from a restaurant is that a food truck moves. “Where mobile food vendors, they do can and do come from elsewhere,” he told council, saying he is personally aware of at least one vendor that passes through and pays sales tax to nobody. Staff said Cortez is the only jurisdiction in the area without such a license, and that local vendors already license in Durango, Mancos, Dolores and Towaoc.

One councilmember pressed on whether that is fair, pointing out that Cortez has no general business or restaurant license for bricks-and-mortar premises, and asked that any future fee be weighed against that.

The fee is not set, and the figures did not match

The ordinance sets no fee. Staff say a basic processing fee will be proposed in the 2027 fee schedule, which council sees in the coming weeks, and the agenda packet gives no amount.

On the record, three different amounts were named. The city manager said the figure put to him was $35. The staff member who wrote the ordinance said she had originally proposed $50 and that $30 had also been discussed. The city manager said that was not what had come through his office and asked council to set the question aside until staff had, in his words, their ducks in a row. Council agreed to decide the fee separately.

Three airport items, all 7-0

Council accepted the only qualified bid for the 2026 Airport Asbestos Abatement Project: $74,811.55 from Summit Lake Park Eagle Restoration Systems LLC, trading as Eco Safe Abatement LLC of Durango. The work covers the terminal, the FBO building and the Hertz rental car building. Three bids came in; the other two were rejected for missing bid bonds. The grant estimate had budgeted $103,000.

Airport Director Kyle Sloan and a councilmember both put on the record that the money is not the city’s. Council appropriated $221,540 in Environmental Protection Agency grant funding for the work in 2025 under an EPA brownfield cleanup grant, which the packet says requires no local match.

Council also extended the Transportation Security Administration’s lease of terminal space at the airport by five years, through June 30, 2031, on lease GS-08P-LCO00509. The packet puts the city’s annual rental revenue at $10,024.89, paid monthly, with operating-cost and parking charges listed at $0.00. Sloan said the parking line is for TSA staff, whom Cortez does not charge, and that the increase for the new term was minimal because the lease was already running late. Staff told council the amendment form’s odd formatting came from the federal General Services Administration, which would not change it.

The third item was a five-year engineering services agreement for the airport, from December 1, 2026 to November 30, 2031, awarded to Bolton & Menk, Inc. Four firms submitted qualifications and were scored against a Federal Aviation Administration advisory circular: Bolton & Menk and Garver both scored 94.0 out of 100 on their written submittals, LJA Aviation 85.0 and EGIS 78.2. The first three were interviewed, where Bolton & Menk scored 33.3 out of 35, Garver 32.6 and LJA Aviation 29.6.

The agreement sets a framework rather than a total; fees are negotiated project by project. Asked by a councilmember whether a standing contract costs the city competitive bids, Sloan said it does not tie the city’s hands — the firm is an on-call engineer, and the city can still go out for a specialist on a particular project. Garver holds the current five-year contract, which ends this year.

Pool families take the public comment period

The three people who spoke in general public participation all came to talk about the municipal pool, three days before Wednesday’s budget forum and six days after the city reversed its plan to close the outdoor pool in 2027.

The board president of the Cortez Water Dragons said the swim team had 91 swimmers aged 5 to 18 in its April-to-August season, that 52 of them qualified for the seasonal state meet in Alamosa with 222 state-event qualifications between them, and that the team took second overall and won the 2026 Spirit Award. She said the team’s three-day home meet in May drew eight teams and 179 swimmers, that it practices at the outdoor pool from 6:30 to 9:30 four or five evenings a week in summer, and that long-course events and warm-up lanes are not possible at the recreation center. The Current is not naming the speakers: the recording is the only source and auto-captioning is not reliable enough for names.

A second speaker, a volunteer board member for local baseball and softball programs, told council youth sports “are not a luxury” and asked the city to separate necessary repairs from expensive renovation. “We are not asking for state-of-the-art facilities or $1.5 million renovation projects,” she said. A third speaker, a lap swimmer, suggested a two-tier fee that charges county residents less than visitors, more lane time for adults, and lowering the pool’s water temperature to cut the cost of heating water that leaks away.

Council did not respond to the comments; the pool is not on this agenda, and the city has asked for input at the budget forum instead.

What else happened

The CCC camp. An archaeologist from Woods Canyon Archaeological Consultants presented the findings of a second state-funded survey of the Cortez Civilian Conservation Corps camp, in the Carpenter and Geer natural areas. He told council the camp ran from August 22, 1939 to November 1, 1941 as a soil conservation camp, held about 200 men at a time in a town of about 1,800, and was one of 11 CCC camps in Montezuma County. The city charged the camp $25 a month for water. The camp graveled Chestnut Street from Main Street up to the camp, bladed part of the airport runway, and in one spring planted more than 60,000 trees in the county. He traced 217 names and 141 individual enrollee records, of which only about seven gave a Montezuma County hometown; most came from Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas and elsewhere in Colorado. Nearly 1,500 artifacts were analyzed, most of them predating the camp. No buildings survive. A public brochure is being prepared, and the consultants are in talks with the city about protecting the site from city projects.

Appointments. Council appointed Robert Bright to the Planning & Zoning Commission and Jacque Garner to the Library Advisory Board, 7-0. One applicant for P&Z and three for the library had applied; two of the library applicants did not attend their interviews earlier the same evening, which one councilmember called disappointing.

Proclamation. Council adopted a proclamation, read by Councilmember Kathleen Swope, naming November as the month for Cortez residents to “greenlight a vet” by changing one visible light to green.

Litigation. The city attorney reported that the city’s insurance pool, CIRSA, had settled a case in which a former police department employee was the defendant. He said the city itself was not a defendant and described the case as a dispute at the high school involving a visiting coach and the officer. No findings, charges or terms were described. He told council the city is not currently a defendant in any litigation.

Golf. A councilmember reported that the golf advisory committee met October 16 and that both rounds played and revenue are up on last year, with revenue to date around $680,000 against the $700,000 the committee had hoped for; the figures read into the record were not clear enough on the recording to print precisely. The course closes November 15 and covers go on November 21. A golf master plan advisory meeting was set for Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. He also told council the city’s golf professional had qualified for and competed in the Senior PGA Professional Championship and placed high enough to advance to the championship in Florida in April. The Current is not naming him: the captions give three different spellings.

Consent agenda. Passed 7-0: the October 13 minutes, the October 27 expenditure list, and a hotel and restaurant liquor license renewal for New Hong Kong of Cortez, Inc., trading as New Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant at 332 West Main Street.

The meeting ran about 90 minutes and is posted in full on the city’s council meetings channel. The agenda and packet are on the city’s agenda site.