At Last, Costa Mesa Shows Good Sense : A Rejected Proposal to Bar Pushcart Vendors From the City Was--Again--Extreme

Several times in recent months, the Costa Mesa City Council has plunged unwisely into muddy waters, leaving good sense and compassion for minorities and the poor behind. On Tuesday, the council majority showed reasonable restraint in refusing a chance to do it again, this time against pushcart vendors trying to make a living on the city’s streets.

In the past, the council acted to prohibit dayworkers from using the streets to solicit work, and it also tried to make charities an arm of the federal government by holding them responsible for screening those seeking help, as a way to weed out illegal aliens. Both actions, halted by the courts in one instance and by the federal government in the other, were aimed at forcing illegal immigrants out of the city.

So it was not surprising that critics of the proposed plan to bar pushcart vendors from the city’s streets viewed the latest action as but another move in the same direction, especially because most of the vendors, and their customers, are Latino.

The argument raised by Councilmen Orville Amburgey and Ed Glasgow in pushing for the ban was that the vendors who sell food from the carts are a threat to the public’s health and safety. To their credit, Councilwomen Sandra L. Genis, who led the opposition to the ban, Mary Hornbuckle and Mayor Peter F. Buffa were not buying into that extreme approach.

If there’s a problem, existing regulations cover it. Vendors must have a city business license and a county heath permit to take their food carts onto the street. In one 10-day period last month, police cited 22 vendors for violations, code enforcement officials reported. All the city needs to do is continue to enforce those regulations. If police can’t, or consider it too troublesome to try to do so, why punish every vendor by barring them from earning a living?

Restaurants must also have business licenses and health certificates, and if any eatery is found to have unsanitary conditions that are not corrected, it is closed--not every restaurant in town. The same approach should prevail for those who sell their wares from carts.

The council judiciously recognized that contradiction and is considering stricter regulations that will require vendors to display their business and health permits and picture identification. We hope that the city’s reasoned restraint on Tuesday signals a new, more responsible approach in its dealings with Latinos and the less affluent in its midst.