HUNTINGTON BEACH : Police Sell Vendors on Restrictions

After a series of discussions and some initial resistance, the police and street vendors in the Oak View neighborhood have reached an accord on regulating the merchants’ selling practices.

To police, the dozen or so vending trucks that operate in the area have long been a nuisance. Many of the trucks, they say, stake out locations for hours or days on end, promoting loitering, littering and a variety of safety hazards.

But to many residents in the predominantly Latino area near Beach Boulevard and Slater Avenue, the pickup-truck vendors are indispensable. Residents say they are the community’s food markets, convenient places to buy fresh produce, tortillas and Mexican spices, where a neighbor’s word is sufficient payment if cash is short and payday is still weeks away.

Gloria Nunez, a leading spokeswoman for the Oak View Street Vendors Assn., acknowledges some of the problems cited by police. But, she said, vendors have long fought against an overly restrictive policy such as outright prohibition, as Anaheim once imposed in many areas of that city. A similar crackdown in Huntington Beach would deprive her family of a vital source of additional income and leave the residents without accessible places to buy food, she said.

The vendors, however, have managed to reach a compromise with the city of Huntington Beach, approving of a revised ordinance proposed by Police Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg and introduced by the City Council this week.

If the council approves the amended ordinance at its May 20 meeting, Nunez and other vendors operating vehicles, wagons or pushcarts would be forbidden from staying at a single location for more than 30 minutes. At the end of that time, a merchant would have to move at least 500 feet away.

The proposal would also set operating hours of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. for all street vendors. Any stands or trucks would have to be removed from public property during non-operating hours.

Vendors would also be forbidden from running electrical cords across sidewalks or streets to the trucks, or selling on the sidewalk side of a vehicle. They would have to clean up all trash within 40 feet of their selling spots and move immediately if a police officer considers the vendor a potential traffic obstacle.

For Nunez, the stiffened ordinance would mean her regular customers would often have to find her elsewhere besides her usual spot on Koledo Lane. But the vendors can live with the new restrictions if it will prevent an outright ban on street selling, she said.

Many of the vendors, Nunez said, originally opposed any additional regulation. “But now they feel better about it. If it’s necessary, we’re going to move,” she said. “We want to work with the law.”

Lowenberg’s proposed law would be less restrictive than existing street-vending ordinances in Anaheim, Santa Ana and Stanton.

“We recognize that these vendors are serving that community,” Lowenberg said of Oak View’s mobile merchants. “We’re hoping to strike a balance between controlling (problems) and still meeting the needs of the folks who live in the area.”