ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Needed: Sensible Vendor Policy

Though it is not fair to lump all vending truck operators together, there are enough bad apples in Anaheim that the City Council seems justified in looking at new ways to minimize their impact on some parts of the city. A restriction that bans vending in residential neighborhoods may be appropriate.

The council tonight will have before it alternative ordinances that would ban vendors outright, restrict them to non-residential areas or beef up city regulations aimed at keeping them from being a public nuisance. The council is reviewing this matter after being flooded with complaints that vendors have become too numerous and that they are too messy and too loud.

The problem seems to be that some vendors operate as if they were the cowboys of entrepreneurship. They don’t cotton much to restrictions, and they move around the territory pretty much as they see fit, routinely violating the rules set up by the city over the years. For example, vendors are required to move on after an hour, close up shop at 9 p.m. and not litter. But neighbors say that some stay in one place all day and well into the night and leave a trail of trash behind them.

One woman posed a good question to the City Council last week when she asked why vendors would be allowed to open a store outside her door when she would not be allowed one in her house.

Care must be taken not to issue blanket bans on these small businesses, however. They provide many people, particularly immigrants, with employment and a place to start in the American economy. That’s why vendors should be allowed to operate in business or industrial areas.

But if they have gotten out of hand in neighborhoods, perhaps it is time to usher them along to commercial locations.