ANAHEIM : Resident Blasts Vendors’ Horns, Asks City to Stem Noise

Wrapping himself in the American flag--literally--the president of a neighborhood group demanded this week that the city crack down on street vendors who blow their vehicles’ horns in residential areas and threatened to take legal action if nothing is done.

“It’s driving me nuts, it’s driving women with little babies nuts,” Mike Blanco, president of a group called Neighborhoods Opposed to Vendors in Anaheim, told the City Council on Tuesday. “I mean, it just doesn’t stop.”

Blanco, a flag draped over his shoulders to dramatize his demand that his rights be protected, played a videotape he made in June showing vendor trucks heralding their arrivals with loud horn blasts.

Tensions between street vendors and neighbors have increased in recent years, prompting the council in September to enact a moratorium on issuing new vendor permits. The vendors, who sell produce and other items from parked trucks and vans, have drawn complaints in some neighborhoods about noise, trash and loitering problems.

Blanco, who has submitted written complaints to the city since March, said that unless the vendors are silenced, he will file a lawsuit against the city in small-claims court to recover the $5,000 that he says his property has depreciated because of the noise.

The council recently extended the moratorium on new permits through the end of the year to give staff members additional time to rewrite existing regulations.