ANAHEIM : Street Vendors Seek Repeal of Time Limit

The long-running battle between the city and its street vendors will be back before the City Council tonight, when the vendors will demand repeal of a recently enacted ordinance limiting the time they can park.

Pedro Vasquez, a vendor and leader of the Southern California Street Vendors Assn., said the ordinance that requires the vendors to move their trucks 100 feet every 10 minutes is “driving us out of business” and they may be forced to sue. The penalty for violating the ordinance is a $37 fine.

“We are losing sales, we are losing drivers, we are losing customers, we are losing our businesses,” said Vasquez, who owns 12 trucks that operate in Anaheim. “Ten minutes is not enough time for us to park, open our doors, pick up the trash in the street and sell. The new ordinance is 100% unworkable.”

But John Poole, the city’s code enforcement manager, said the ordinance is a workable compromise for both the vendors and those who feel they bring blight to neighborhoods.

“My department is caught between the people who don’t want the vendors to exist at all and some of the vendors, who were parking all day in some places,” Poole said. He said he doesn’t see how moving 100 feet costs the vendors customers. “In most of the city, they don’t even have to leave the block for almost two hours. . . . These are supposed to be mobile vendors and we just want them to move.”

The street vending issue has been boiling for almost two years, since residents first complained to the council about vendors who were noisy, dirty and parking for up to 18 hours in front of their homes. The city had a law that prohibited vendors from parking in one spot for more than an hour, but it was widely ignored and rarely enforced.

The vendors countered by saying that they are simply entrepreneurs who are being blamed for things such as drug dealing and declining neighborhoods that are not their doing. The vendors, who are almost exclusively Latino, have accused their opponents of racism, which has been denied.

After months of debate, the council responded in September, 1992, by banning vendors from neighborhoods. But last May, a state appeals court ruled that the ordinance violated state law and said the vendors could remain in neighborhoods.

But some residents and property owners continued to complain, and last month the council adopted an ordinance reducing the parking limit to 10 minutes.

Vasquez said Poole’s code enforcement officers have been overzealous in their enforcement of the new ordinance. For example, he said, the officers don’t mark tires with chalk to keep track of the time limit.

“They sit and watch us from undercover and then walk up and hand us a ticket without warning,” Vasquez said. “John Poole wants to get rid of us.”

Poole said that “nothing could be further from the truth.” He said there is no requirement that his officers mark tires or make their presence known before issuing a ticket.

“When we have marked tires, the vendors remove the marks,” Poole said. “We are not trying to play games. We just want the vendors to observe the 10-minute limit.”