ANAHEIM : Task Force on Vendors Still at Odds

At 4 a.m. every morning, Pedro Vasquez, 46, lifts the hood of his vendor’s truck to check the oil and water and then gets on the freeway, headed for a Los Angeles produce company.

By 8:45 a.m., if the traffic is moving, he arrives back in an Anaheim neighborhood, where he joins dozens of other vendors who have just completed a similar jaunt, and begins his 10-hour business day.

Street vendors selling an eclectic array of goods--from fresh produce to clothes and furniture--have become an institution in some neighborhoods, where residents depend on them daily for household necessities.

“It’s nearby and you can get just about anything,” said Humberto Fuentes, 16, who, like many young people in the Jeffrey-Lynne neighborhood behind the Disneyland Hotel, was buying groceries for the family dinner.

Prices are competitive with local markets. And a number of vendors, such as Jose Vasquez, 18, who manages a truck owned by his father, Rafael Vasquez, in the same neighborhood, offer interest-free credit on a weekly honor system. Most also will cash payroll checks for their trusted customers.

Jose Vasquez said some of his customers have been buying from him since his father first started the business eight years ago.

The colorful vendors have lately become an issue in the city, which is the defendant in a $250,000 lawsuit filed by a vendors’ association and about a dozen local vendors last summer.

The suit alleges that the city violated the vendors’ civil rights by enforcing a 3-year-old ordinance that prohibits, among other things, the use of amplified sound. Vendors claim that they must honk their horns to announce their arrival.

A task force commissioned by Mayor Fred Hunter in November to study the ordinance plans to present its findings to City Council next month. The council then will decide whether to amend the ordinance.

Both the city staff and vendors are represented on the six-member task force, and each side will present its views to the City Council. In addition, Allan B. Hughes, who is mediating the task force meetings and is executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, will present a recommendation.

The task force members are still at odds on a number of points in the ordinance, including a requirement that vendors have $500,000 in insurance. They also dispute the 30-minute limit per stop that vendors must adhere to.

“We’re trying to retain the integrity of our residential areas,” said John Poole, code enforcement manager and author of the ordinance. “When there’s an intrusion of business into residential, we have to be careful.”

The ordinance, based on other cities’ laws, was passed in 1986 after complaints from residents that vendors created noise and litter.

Poole said the ordinance is enforced only when his office receives complaints. In winter months, vendors are less active and so complaints fall to about four or five a month, he said. But in the summer, the figure is “much higher.”

Vendors, who pay $200 in annual business and operating fees to the city, argue that it is the 150 unlicensed vendors who cause complaints from neighbors, which hurt the 50 licensed operators.

Pedro Vasquez, former president of Union de Commerciantes Latinos del Sur de California, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and president of the new Latin American Vendors Assn., is a task force member.

“We have all kinds of licenses to do our business,” Vasquez said. “Still, we cannot make a living.”

He said the ordinance is necessary but flawed. Vendors should be required to carry insurance, he said, but a $250,000 policy is more reasonable than the current $500,000 requirement.

Vendors also need more than 30 minutes in one place when business is good, he said.