Thousand Oaks Moves to Impose Fees on Street Vendors : Small business: Store owners cite overhead that makes it tough from them to compete. Cart operators tell of events that hurt their profit.
Street vendors who peddle goods on public property may have to pay the city rent under a proposal that the Thousand Oaks City Council will consider Tuesday.
The unspecified fees for use of city sidewalks would soothe some local business owners who have complained that street vendors can undercut standard prices because of their low overhead.
As the owner of a flower shop, Michele LaFrenais said she cringes when she sees itinerant vendors hawking cheap roses outside her store--especially since she pays for the upkeep of the very parking lot her competitors stand in.
“It’s the small businessman that ends up being hurt,” she said.
But the peddlers point out that they, too, are business people struggling to get by in a tough economy. Predictably, they resent the idea of paying the city for permission to cruise public sidewalks.
The draft ordinance that the council will discuss Tuesday night contains only a blank space in the section about fees. Leaving the final numbers to the politicians’ discretion, City Atty. Mark Sellers offered as models two cities that charge vendors rent: Berkeley, $240 a year, and Pasco, Wash., $45 a month.
Either fee would be way too much for hot dog vendor John Smiley, who said the notion of writing checks for a small patch of concrete is ridiculous. As an outdoor salesman he may not pay overhead, but his profits fluctuate with the weather and the traffic, he said.
“When it rains, I lose those two months and the (fixed-site restaurants) don’t lose anything,” he said, slapping mustard and chili onto hot dogs for a steady stream of noontime customers. “It’s not fair.”
With both sides crying foul, the City Council must step in and decide how to level the playing field without squashing free enterprise.
The debate echoes a similar dispute between fixed-site carwash operators and the mobile crews that scrub autos in parking lots for $5 apiece.
Just two weeks ago, the Planning Commission recommended a crackdown on the roving car washers. The commission proposed a new law requiring the mobile crews to obtain $150 operating permits and banning them from shopping center parking lots and city streets.
Although those regulations represent a compromise reached after months of debate, neither side is pleased. And the same angry arguments are surfacing again in preliminary debate about the street vendor ordinance.
So far, politicians have expressed more sympathy for the owners of fixed-site businesses, who paint their mobile competitors as cutthroat upstarts willing to break rules and cheat on taxes in order to get ahead.
“I’m absolutely in favor of fees,” Mayor Elois Zeanah said.
In proposing tough regulations on roving businesses, city leaders have also brought up health and safety concerns. The mobile car washers have been accused of letting chemicals wash down city storm drains, and push-cart operators have been faulted for creating traffic problems.
To address the safety issue, the proposed vending ordinance would keep street peddlers at least 100 feet from the nearest intersection and 500 feet from freeway ramps, schools or churches. In addition to the fees, vendors would have to buy business licenses, insurance and city identification cards.
The law also would ban vendors in residential neighborhoods. It would outlaw door-to-door solicitors after dark, except those selling newspapers or representing nonprofit political or religious groups, which are constitutionally protected from such restrictions.
“The little ice-cream truck that comes down my cul-de-sac every Saturday bothers me because of the noise, so I’d be in favor of that,” Councilman Frank Schillo said, referring to the residential vending ban.
Although he lamented the loss of the ice-cream truck, with its image of childhood treats, Chamber of Commerce President Steve Rubenstein said he also approves of the proposed law.
“The free enterprise system allows for innovative new businesses . . . but we have to have a level playing field and certain rules across the board,” Rubenstein said. “We also need to uphold community standards.”
