ANAHEIM : City Attorney Defends Street Parking Ban

Allegations in a lawsuit challenging the city’s new ban on street parking are unfounded, City Atty. Jack L. White said this week, maintaining that the ordinance is not aimed at any group except scofflaws.

The ban, which took effect this summer, is designed to reduce crime, White said, “and it’s doing a good job of that.”

The ordinance, which Anaheim adopted as an aggressive approach to fighting drug dealing and other illegal activities, was unanimously approved by the City Council in April and phased in over the next few months.

It prohibits parking along certain streets with a high incidence of crime.

But a group of street vendors and residents filed a lawsuit last week alleging that the new policy is actually a covert attempt to drive street vendors away from the Leatrice-Wakefield neighborhood.

Salvador Sarmiento, a Santa Ana lawyer representing the 10 street vendors and four residents who brought the suit, said city officials “are not only hurting the street vendors, they’re primarily hurting the people who live there.”

Many apartment dwellers in the neighborhood now have to park “blocks and blocks away” from their homes, he said. That is not only inconvenient but potentially dangerous, he said, because residents often have to walk long distances after dark.

“If they’re trying to do something about crime,” Sarmiento said, “increase the amount of police in the area. Don’t hurt the people who are living there.”

A hearing on the lawsuit is set for Aug. 22 in Orange County Superior Court.