My first city council meeting

[Undertoad]

I continue here so that I won't edit my above post again. There was a way to get a hot-dog cart out of this council. You should have gone to several of the individual council members and asked for quick meetings to get their buy-in in advance. Address it positively. Explain that they can make the change only for "proper" carts that are too large to move normally. Explain how these "proper" carts are not an eyesore and will increase their revenue and address needs. Be friendly, listen carefully to their concerns, and try to address them reasonably. Once you have the buy in of three members outside of the local meeting, go to the next meeting and make the request while ignoring any other meeting business. Once they have voted in favor of your need, thank them and tell them how reasonable they have been.

Then, at the NEXT meeting, bring up the ISP tax as a concern, not a demand. If possible, bring a prior legal decision that supports your position and hand it to the council's attorney. Tell them it was something that stuck in your mind and that you just want to make sure the township isn't making a serious mistake by taking up a tax that could get rescinded later, which would mess up future budgets and require them to find other sources of income. Tell them you heard of another township that did that and wound up in big trouble three years later.