Anaheim Plans Showdown Over Street Vendors

Anaheim residents will be invited to voice opinions on whether vendors should be allowed to hawk their goods on city streets. The opportunity will come May 13 at a public hearing approved by the City Council on Tuesday.

Under one proposal, the vendors’ trucks would once again roll through apartment neighborhoods in the city--but under strict regulations such as a ban on music and bells, which vendors use to attract customers. The truck vendors cater to Anaheim’s Latino community, peddling fresh fruit and vegetables.

But that same proposal would banish non-motorized vehicles such as pushcarts used by paleteros to peddle frozen fruit-flavored bars during summer months.

“They’re just a real nuisance,” senior code enforcement officer Richard D. La Rochelle said, referring to litter caused by pushcart vendors.

Jose Luis Bucio, president of a recently formed 27-member truck vendors association, Union de Comerciantes Latinos del Sur de California, predicted that if pushcart vendors are banned from the city, they too would form an organization and lobby for changes.

Vendors Increasing

Residents of the Chevy Chase and Lynne-Jeffrey neighborhoods have long complained that street vendors bring litter and noise. Because the number of vendors has increased--leading to more and more complaints--the city late last year began a crackdown by citing a 1926 ordinance that forbids such sales in business districts. According to the California Vehicle Code, apartment areas qualify as business districts.

Since the crackdown, the Lynne-Jeffrey area has “seen a tremendous improvement,” said Len Spivak, who owns an eight-unit apartment in the neighborhood. Spivak said vendors often block intersections with their trucks and could cause an accident. “Somebody is going to get killed out there,” he told the council Tuesday.

Pledged to Help Clean Up

The vendors, acknowledging traffic and litter problems, have pledged to help clean the neighborhoods and monitor drivers--all in an effort to be allowed to sell near apartments, the most lucrative sales areas. Bucio said the group has 14,000 signatures of support from the Latino community, members of which see the vendors as a valuable service.

Robert Nava, staff specialist with the Orange County Human Relations Commission, who serves as an interpreter for the group, told the council Tuesday that the group’s official position does not include a stand that the city is discriminating against Latinos. Various members of the vendor group had individually said that the city’s crackdown was discriminatory.

When asked following the meeting if Nava’s statement represented a change in their position, Bucio said that discrimination charges were never the official position of the group. Seconds later, however, Bucio pointed to a luncheon wagon that was selling sandwiches outside Anaheim City Hall--also in a business district--as an example of selective enforcement.

When Nava told the council about the luncheon wagon, La Rochelle said his office will “take care of it.” Added Mayor Don Roth: “Tomorrow, he’ll have a ticket.”