ANAHEIM : Residents a No-Show at Vendors’ Meeting

A meeting to find a compromise between Anaheim street vendors and residents who want them banned fizzled Thursday when the residents’ representatives did not attend.

About 10 vendors and their backers were at the meeting at the Chamber of Commerce, and they said the residents’ non-appearance shows that their side is the only one willing to compromise. A City Council majority said this week that it was prepared to ban the vendors from residential neighborhoods at its meeting Tuesday if no compromise is reached in advance.

“Why would the City Council give preference to a group that doesn’t want to come out and play ball?” asked Javier Barajas, president of the Anaheim Street Vendors Assn., which represents about 60 of the city’s 153 licensed vendors. There are also unlicensed vendors operating illegally in the city.

The vendors--and their customers--are almost exclusively Latino and sell a variety of products such as produce, groceries, cigarettes and clothes primarily in the downtown and Disneyland areas. They have accused many of their opponents--who are primarily white, with some Latino and Asian-American members--of being racist.

Attempts to reach leaders of NOVA, Neighborhoods Opposed to street Vendors in Anaheim, failed Thursday. Its members have complained that the vendors park in one spot for more than an hour, throw trash on lawns and in the streets, urinate in public and sell smuggled cigarettes, all of which violate city and state regulations. They have denied the racism charge, saying they are opposed only to the vendors’ practices and not their ethnicity.

Councilman William D. Ehrle, who has been pushing for a compromise, said he was disappointed that NOVA did not attend the meeting, but he added that he hopes an agreement is still possible.

“I’m not one to give up,” he said. “To boycott a meeting--if that is what happened (with NOVA)--is not in the best interest of the community or good government. . . . We need to sit down and try to reason this out together.”

Barajas said his association’s members obey the city’s regulations and should not be punished because other vendors do not. He said his group would agree to increasing the maximum fine for violations from $50 to $100 for a first offense within a year, $200 for a second offense and $500 for subsequent violations.

The city has said it has been unable to collect many of the fines already levied, but Barajas said his group would go along with proposals to impound the trucks and arrest those who don’t pay.