Anaheim May Clamp Down on Vendors : Neighborhoods: Most residents in debate before City Council want an end to street sales from trucks.

After a heated, 90-minute debate Tuesday between Latino street vendors and residents of neighborhoods where they park and sell, the City Council agreed to consider ordinances next week that would ban or severely restrict most street sales.

About 250 people packed the City Council chambers and the steps in front of City Hall, with about two-thirds saying they want the vendors banned.

The residents, including some Latinos, said the vendors bring crime, including drug dealing and shootings, and lower property values in the neighborhoods where they park because they and their customers discard trash and urinate on front lawns.

There are 153 licensed vendors working primarily in the city’s central residential district, selling everything from groceries to clothes to cigarettes out of trucks parked along curbs, city officials said. Dozens more unlicensed vendors also operate in the city. Ordinances require them to move their trucks at least 200 feet hourly and sell only between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.

The group, Neighbors Opposed to Vendors in Anaheim, played a videotape which showed vendors parking their trucks at one spot for hours at a time and as many as five vendors on the same block.

“I moved here from Santa Ana to get a better life, but the last few years it seems like I’m back in Santa Ana,” said Richard Delgado, an Orange County inspector who lives near downtown. “I do not consider this a racial issue. I am Mexican-American myself. People just don’t want them around.”

The vendors say that they are only trying to make a living and that all of them should not be made to suffer because some vendors violate city ordinances.

“We vendors work hard so we can employ men so they can support their families and live well,” said Javier Barajas, who owns several vending trucks. “We share our income with the people. We sell to people who need us, and we are clean. We are not a problem.”

Councilman Irv Pickler said he wants street vending prohibited, and Councilman Tom Daly said he would consider such a move.

“If you ride through these neighborhoods (downtown), you will see that the vendors are a detriment to an area we are trying to spruce up,” Pickler said. “The effort we are now putting into regulating vendors, we could be putting that effort into combatting drug sales.”

Councilman William D. Ehrle said that he opposes an outright ban but that he does want to limit the number of licenses the city issues and possibly reduce the one-hour parking limit.

“I have spent about eight hours driving through these areas the last few days . . . and what I was seeing in many cases was a way of life for the Hispanic culture for people from Mexico and other places,” Ehrle said. “I have heard some (of the residents) say that this is America and we do things different here. But I think in Anaheim we should be able to find some type of compromise . . . and give the vendors a chance to clean up their act.”

But most of the residents said they want the vendors banned. Many said they have been threatened when they confront vendors in front of their homes.

Susan Kocsis said she had to give up being a free-lance mathematician because of the horns sounded by vendors who park outside her home.

“The computations I do take hours of concentration,” she said. “I have had to give that up and go back to being a substitute teacher with wages well below the poverty line. These vendors are in no way like the Good Humor man or Helms Bakery trucks we fondly remember. They are a blight.”

But 14-year-old Yvonne Hernandez, one of the few residents to speak in favor of the vendors, said they are necessary. She said her mother doesn’t let her or her younger brother and sister venture beyond their apartment complex because of the crime in their neighborhood, so she must purchase from the vendors.