Rocky Road

They rumble through the neighborhood, some of them old and dingy, marred with graffiti, hand-painted signs and chipping paint.

They park in front of a home for 10 minutes, blaring the scratchy, repetitive drone of carnival music until every Johnny gets his Bomb Pop.

We’re talking ice cream trucks here.

And as citizen complaints mount, some county officials are in a decidedly bad humor.

“I’d like to see those ice cream trucks meet the same guidelines of any other business, and not be an insult to the communities in which they’re trying to sell their products,” said Supervisor John K. Flynn, who this week called on county officials to explore stiff new restrictions that could regulate ice cream trucks’ appearance, decibel levels and sales routes.

He isn’t trying to put anyone out of business, he insists. He just wants to create a sane set of standards that vendors must abide by.

“They play their music much too loud, they stop in front of homes much too long, the trucks don’t look very good and people are pretty concerned about the safety of their children,” Flynn said. “They look in some cases like trucks you would see in the Third World, one constituent said to me.”

Part of the problem is that the mobile ice cream business is a popular venture in the perennially mild climate of Ventura County.

More than 150 ice cream trucks comb neighborhoods each day on city and rural streets from one side of the county to the other, county environmental health permit records show.

But while county health officials have the authority to enforce everything from sanitary standards to the temperature of the ice cream, there are no laws on the books that regulate the likes of appearance and noise.

Flynn’s call for new restrictions on ice cream trucks in unincorporated Ventura County follows a rash of similar efforts across Southern California, including those in Oxnard, where officials have approved or considered an array of noise and safety restrictions on vending trucks.

In Costa Mesa, kids now have to look for the ice cream truck rather than listen for it. The city passed a new law in May that muted all bells, whistles, music and other sounds that advertise the wayfaring trucks’ wares.

The trucks can’t park within 500 feet of schools, playgrounds and parks, within 300 feet of another vending vehicle or within 100 feet of an intersection. They can’t park on streets with speed limits over 35 mph, can sell only from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. and can stop for no more than 10 minutes at a time.

In Pasadena, the City Council last year simply restricted ice cream truck sales to the summer months.

Oliver Manrique--who runs a fleet of 15 ice cream trucks with the name Junior’s Ice Cream in and around Ventura, Oxnard and Port Hueneme--said he favors any effort to beef up the rules that govern vendors like himself.

He goes out each day to clean up any graffiti sprayed on his trucks, fearing that if he lets such markings remain too long, the trucks become roving message boards for rival gangs.

“I think if you care about your work, you would run right out and remove graffiti,” said Manrique, who has been in the business for about five years. “I think it’s important that we just don’t point out the problem, but provide solutions. And I think if you had better rules, it would be better for everyone.”

He estimates that he competes with 40 to 50 ice cream trucks that roam the Oxnard area. And the majority of their owners, he said, do not take good care of their vehicles and could stand a little regulation.

But just how far that regulation can go is uncertain.

“I don’t know,” said James L. McBride, the county’s top civil attorney, who first heard of Flynn’s concerns on Tuesday. “I’ve got to look at it.”

No timeline has been set for a report back to the Board of Supervisors.

In Oxnard, city officials have been working for months to write an ordinance striking a happy balance between the right of a vendor to make money and the right of a homeowner to have peace and quiet, said Oxnard Police Sgt. Brian MacDonald, who heads up the city’s code enforcement efforts.

Most residents wouldn’t mind the trucks so much, he said, if vendors would be kind enough to kill the broken record when they stopped.

“That’s where it seems to offend people,” MacDonald said. “One vendor even plays Christmas music all year long.”

Ernest J. Almanza, 62, a 32-year veteran of the Rio School District Board of Trustees and lifelong resident of El Rio, said the biggest concerns among residents there center on litter and safety.

So competitive is the local ice cream biz that trucks can at times cause traffic jams and pose danger to children, he said.

And each day as school lets out, two or three ice cream trucks park on a corner near Rio de Valle Junior High School.

With no trash cans in sight, students have two options: put the empty ice cream wrappers in their pockets, or throw them on the ground. Most choose the latter, Almanza said.

Sometimes vendors will return later and clean up the mess. More often, no one does.

“I’m not trying to put anyone out of business,” he said. “It’s not anything to get all excited about. But if they have a set of guidelines they can follow, they’ll have to abide.”