New Law Is a Tough Sell : Santa Ana Vendors Go to Court in Effort to Stop Enforcement of Restrictions on Their Trade

As Spurgeon Street residents lined up on the sidewalk to buy produce, eggs and other household staples from his three trucks, Jose Fuentes, 29, denounced a new city law he said could ruin his business.

“This will affect all the people who work for me. We don’t have any other job to make a living,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter.

Fuentes, whose mobile food and grocery business serves predominantly Latino neighborhoods citywide, has filed a lawsuit with five other local vendors to have the law struck down.

The ordinance prohibits food vendors from remaining in any location for more than 30 minutes, parking within 500 feet of schools, parks, recreation areas and other vending vehicles, and within 200 feet of intersections. The law also requires vendors to have $1-million insurance policies and includes licensing and safety provisions. Violations of the law are misdemeanors, punishable by up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine.

Passed in October, but not yet enforced, the ordinance is intended to enhance traffic safety and ensure fair competition among city businesses, city officials said.

“I firmly believe this is blatantly unfair, and it targets the Hispanic community. It’s an insult to that community,” said attorney Richard R. Therrien, who is representing the vendors.

“The city is restricting the right of people to make a living. And there’s certainly a need (for vending trucks) in a lot of the Hispanic neighborhoods where some people don’t have cars and may not be able to get to the store. These people (vendors) are providing a valuable service,” Therrien said.

He said that city has overstepped its authority by approving regulations that only the state has the power to make. Further, the rules are so restrictive, they will force many of the city’s 80-plus vendors out of the city and deprive them of their right to earn a living, he said.

Assistant City Atty. Robert J. Wheeler defended the ordinance as legal and appropriate. “We aren’t precluded from regulating (the vendors) because no state laws comprehensively regulate food vehicle vending businesses,” he said.

Francisco Gutierrez, executive assistant to the city manager, said the law was needed to ensure that traffic moves safely and unhindered through densely populated neighborhoods.

He said traffic officials support the law because the vendors’ trucks can easily block the view of other drivers, making the streets especially dangerous for the small children who often accompany their parents to buy groceries.

Also local business owners support the law because it ensures that mobile vendors are licensed and must meet the same regulations as local supermarkets, Gutierrez said.

“We’re not doing this to drive (vendors) out,” he said. “We want to make sure the environment we have for the community is fair and safe.”

During one recent morning, Cynthia Aguilar, 12, purchased a carton of 20 eggs from a vending truck that parked on her street. She praised the vendors’ services as convenient and inexpensive, adding that, “it’s pretty neat because you don’t have to go all the way to the store.

“If I don’t have enough money, they’ll write my name down and let me have (groceries on credit). You’d never get that at a supermarket,” she said.

Plaintiffs will urge a Superior Court judge to invalidate the law during a hearing this afternoon.