ANAHEIM : City Delays Street Vendor Plan

Court challenges to street vendor laws have delayed Anaheim’s efforts to develop a set of regulations.

Code Enforcement Manager John Poole said he had planned to bring a reworked ordinance before the City Council by late September or early October. Now, he said, he will wait for settlement of a lawsuit filed against the city and similar suits against Santa Ana and San Juan Capistrano.

“We’re going to watch what happens . . . before we go forward,” Poole said Friday. Anaheim does not want to enact a new ordinance, he said, until the courts have made clear to what extent a city may regulate vendors.

Poole still hopes to have an ordinance ready for council consideration before the end of the year, he said, because that is when a city moratorium on issuing street vendor permits is to expire.

The moratorium was imposed so that the City Council could review its municipal code in response to residents’ complaints about noise, litter, loitering and other problems associated with vendors who sell food and merchandise from vehicles.

Vendors contend that Anaheim has burdened them with unfair restrictions that make it difficult to conduct business.

In a related development, the council is expected to give final approval Tuesday to a measure that would delete two provisions from the current street vendor law: one concerning weighing and measuring devices on vending trucks and the other pertaining to sanitary standards.

A Superior Court judge recently ruled that the provisions are preempted by the state Health and Safety Code.