Council OKs Districts for Street Vendors

In a dispute that pitted homeowners against immigrant street vendors, the City Council on Tuesday approved a compromise plan to legalize and regulate sidewalk peddling in specially designated districts of Los Angeles.

The council’s action was a partial victory for the city’s 3,000 mostly low-income Latino, black and Asian street vendors who had supported a proposal to legalize the practice citywide.

In a 11-3 vote, the council moved instead to direct the city attorney’s office to draft an ordinance requiring that vendors obtain city permits and establishing special vending districts that could range in size from a square block to an entire council district.

The council meeting was attended by hundreds of people, most of them Latinos who frequently burst into cheers during a three-hour debate.

Speaking in support of the vendors, Cardinal Roger Mahony argued that under the city’s current ban on street vending “scarce police resources have been diverted to arrest and ticket people who are doing nothing other than seeking honest work to support themselves and their families.”

Critics expressed a variety of positions, ranging from opposing street vending anywhere in the city to opposing it in certain neighborhoods.

“We don’t object to vending per se, but it hasn’t been beneficial to our community,” said Raymond Jackson, a spokesman for a community improvement association in the San Fernando Valley community of Pacoima. “We don’t feel vending in our community is an appropriate thing for us to support.”

Jackson said the presence of vendors creates noise, especially late at night and early in the morning, and hurts property values.

The draft ordinance will be reviewed by at least two council panels--the Community and Economic Development Committee and Public Works Committee--before being forwarded to the full council for final consideration later this year, city officials said.

“It’s not ideal, but it does give us an opportunity to try it out in certain areas and iron out the kinks,” said Anne Kamsvaag, a spokeswoman for the Central American Refugee Center in Los Angeles. “If it works, it would be beneficial to expand the program later.”

Street vending is illegal in Los Angeles, and violators face maximum penalties of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Arrests of street vendors have increased from 1,400 in 1989 to 2,700 in 1990, according to a recent city report.

Among those recently arrested was Lillian Colocho, 28, who was picked up by police in downtown Los Angeles on Dec. 29 for selling sliced mangoes on Broadway to passersby.

“I had to pay $850 in ticket fines and bail,” said Colocho, one of dozens of immigrants from El Salvador who filled the council chambers on Tuesday. “I would rather pay for permits to sell my mangoes.”

City Councilman Michael Woo’s original proposal to legalize vending throughout the city was strongly opposed by homeowner groups and small business owners who feared that peddling would increase crime and blight, decrease property values and create unfair competition because street vendors do not have to pay rent.

Realizing there were not enough votes on the council for a citywide ordinance, Woo supported a motion by Councilman Richard Alatorre to set aside special districts for the vending, which has its roots in the stream of immigrants who come from countries where the practice is a way of life.

“I still think it was a major victory,” Woo said. “Without this proposal we would continue to have an uncontrolled situation with vendors who can’t work under the current obsolete law.”

Opponents included council members Nate Holden, Joan Milke Flores and Ernani Bernardi, who told the council “it’s a gigantic horrible step backward to fill city streets with pushcarts.”

Under the compromise, creation of special vending districts would be a joint effort between vendors and merchants in a given area, and the Board of Public Works, city officials said.

Essentially, street vendors and merchants would petition the Board of Public Works to establish special districts in areas where vending is already a way of life, and to set limits on the location and number of proposed vending sites, officials said.

Areas already targeted for consideration include Boyle Heights, MacArthur Park, downtown Los Angeles, the Pico-Union District and parts of Hollywood, said Julie Jaskol, an aide to Woo.

Street vendors selling wares ranging from toys to cassette tapes in designated areas would be required to obtain a business tax and liability insurance. Food vendors would also be required to obtain an additional permit from the county health department.

Supporters of the proposal are negotiating with city officials over costs of the permits. They favor a plan that would cost vendors $500 per year, with payments in two installments.

Enforcement would be handled by public works inspectors and the Los Angeles Police Department, city officials said.

Felicita Garcia, 39, who came to the United States from El Salvador in 1989, was elated by the council’s action, saying, “If I have to pay for equality with other business owners in Los Angeles, I’ll do it.

“On a good week I make about $150 a week selling corn on the cob in East Los Angeles,” Garcia said. “I send about $100 each month to my mother, father and two young sons in El Salvador.”

But Gordon Murley, president of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns., which fought against Woo’s original proposal, suggested that immigrant street vendors were only “puppets of special interests” who supply their wares.

“They are unfortunate pawns who think this ordinance will benefit just them,” Murley said. “The people street vendors work for will control where they are allowed to operate” and their profits.

Steve Koff, a spokesman for the Southern California Grocers Assn., said he had concerns that the program would be properly monitored. But he said his group generally favors the proposal, noting, “Some studies show the presence of street vendors can actually increase pedestrian traffic in some areas.”

As insurance against failure, Murley added that “if we do have special vending districts in the city, people should be allowed to pull the plug if they don’t work.”