In West Covina, if You Can’t Fight It, at Least You Can Buy . . . : City Haul

Forget the tie for dad and the perfume for mom. The city of West Covina has some different holiday gift ideas.

Such as a vintage, gold-colored parking meter plucked off the streets of Las Vegas that could be used to charge the kids for their time on the phone. Or a West Covina traffic signal to direct visitors through the house. Perhaps the pooch would appreciate a fire hydrant.

The city’s new shop at the Eastland Shopping Center is also selling old manhole covers, fire hoses and even a used police motorcycle.

Officials of the San Gabriel Valley community opened the West Covina City Haul store last month to achieve a goal any municipality can understand--to raise revenue without raising taxes.

The store, believed to be the first of its kind in Los Angeles County, features “vintage” paraphernalia not only from West Covina but also other cities that apparently have not realized they can profit from selling, say, old water meters--even if they are busted--or discarded stop signs otherwise bound for scrap. For shoppers with civic pride, there are West Covina history books, West Covina coffee mugs and West Covina T-shirts.

“I think it’s a great idea if the city can make some money selling this stuff off--it’s definitely better than raising taxes,” said Paula Ramos of Covina, one of five shoppers browsing about the store on a recent afternoon.

Ramos spent $1.62 on a couple of pencils emblazoned with West Covina , gifts for her two daughters.

Junius (Red) Murray spent $830. On old fire equipment.

A retired firefighter from Upland, Murray collects the tools of his former trade as a hobby and side business, selling some of it at a small booth in a Pomona antique store.

“This stuff is Americana,” he said as he gathered his purchase, which included a 1990 firefighter’s helmet and a 40-year-old “portable monitor,” a beefed-up fire nozzle capable of spraying 1,000 gallons a minute.

“A West Covina fireman told me about this place and promised me I’d drool. I did,” Murray said. “I think I got a real bargain, but I imagine someone else might think I’m a fool for buying all of this stuff.”

Many of the customers these days are holiday shoppers wandering out of a Mervyn’s department store into the mall. The City Haul shop--whose front features a mural depicting West Covina in its pre-subdivision, citrus harvesting era--sits between a Payless shoe store and Waldenbooks shop.

“The place surprised the hell out of me,” said Ron Day, a retired tram engineer from Covina, who stumbled upon the store on his way to a bench. He eyed the parking meters then balked at the prices, from $40 to $60.

“I’m retired and I don’t need any play toys,” he said. “But you never know when you’ll get stuck trying to find the right gift and need something ridiculous like this.”

The parking meters did not seem ridiculous to Evelyn Tapia of La Puente--she thought they might be a great way to charge the kids for extended use of the household phone or bathroom. The meters are in working order and although they do not come with a key to open the coin holder, a screwdriver will do the trick.

“I figure the meter could pay for itself within a few months,” Tapia said.

West Covina appropriated $60,000 in start-up money to launch the store and expects profits of $20,000 to $30,000 the first year, maybe $50,000 thereafter.

“The driving goal for staff and council on this was to communicate a sense of entrepreneurship in the city. We have a commitment now to breaking the mold,” said Dan Holler, an administrative analyst heading the store project.

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He acknowledged though, “You’re not going to see the store make a big dent in our $30-million general fund budget.”

But who knows? City Haul was modeled after the San Diego City Store, which opened several years ago at that city’s City Hall. It was so successful that San Diego opened two more shops last year and expects to gross more than $400,000 this year selling old city equipment and new items such as custom-made street signs.

West Covina is not the only strapped governmental body around Los Angeles County to catch the entrepreneurial spirit. The county coroner’s office offers mail-order mementos such as toe tags, while the county’s animal control department sells designer dog tags.

Although other cities in the area have considered launching their own versions of City Haul, there as yet seems to be no competitor offering, say, eight-inch-high “fire hose strainers.” Once used to prevent debris from clogging fire hoses drawing water out of a lake, they are being sold at West Covina City Haul as . . . candleholders. They run from $25 to $50, depending on size.

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The law of supply and demand can also affect the price tag. A refurbished fire hydrant, painted like a Dalmatian and tagged “Sparky,” was listed at $350 on opening day. Two weeks later, the item was still sitting there--and the tag said $250.

Learning from San Diego’s success, West Covina also offers, for about $17, custom street signs bearing messages such as “No Parking Except for Dad.” Other proven sellers are the “Swimsuit Optional” signs and those warning “Discharge of Firearms Prohibited,” with the metal bullet-ridden, of course. West Covina police take aim at the signs with their shotguns to ready them for City Haul.

In part because West Covina, population 98,000, does not have enough of its own paraphernalia to stock the shop, much of the inventory is scavenged from other communities around the state and beyond. West Covina officials recently bought about 80 street signs from Manhattan Beach, paying $2 each. They plan to sell them for $14.

“Once we cleaned out our warehouse,” Holler said, “we began to clean out other cities’ .”