If you’re trying to making a living selling anything from food to pots and pans without a permit in a Los Angeles city park, you better figure out something new.
The Los Angeles City Council moved Wednesday to restore a ban on the unpermitted sale of wares, food and services in city parks and beaches.
Street vending is already prohibited on sidewalks, but the parks ban had been suspended due to legal challenges, which have since been resolved, city attorneys told the City Council.
As a result, the city drafted an ordinance to reinstate the ban, which the City Council tentatively approved on a 12-3 vote. Because the ordinance failed to receive unanimous support, it will return to the City Council for a second vote.
Approval of the ban would allow the city to impose a $100 fine for the first offense. The second offense would warrant a $250 fine and a potential misdemeanor charge.
City recreation and parks officials told the council Wednesday the law would give them the ability to take enforcement action against vendors that operate unsafely and without permits at parks.
Kevin Regan, with the Recreation and Parks department, told the council that the law is aimed at businesses that operate without proper safeguards, and cited the example of “a pony ride operator that just shows up at Hansen Dam,” a regional park in the San Fernando Valley.
“He drives in with a truck and trailer, he offloads the ponies, he offers pony rides,” Regan said. “No insurance, no permits, no regulation, no inspection, no way for the department to ensure that the ponies are well cared for, that they’re safe, that the saddles are safe, that the ride is safe, that the location is safe.
“We have no oversight whatsoever, and we have absolutely no enforcement ability to stop this individual,” he said.
Regan added that the proposed law is not necessarily aimed at the “mom- and-pop” pushcart vendors that can often be seen at parks selling ice cream, bacon-wrapped hot dogs and fruit.
Regan said police officers are able to exercise discretion when enforcing the park vending ban, and that the Recreation and Parks Department is “working hand-in-hand” with other city officials on developing a permitting program to allow pushcart and similar mobile vendors to operate legally in the city.
Councilman Gil Cedillo voted against the ordinance, saying it would nevertheless hurt immigrant vendors.
“The city is about to go forward and say that if you’re caught selling popsicles in the park, you can be denied citizenship for the rest of your life,” he said. “To me, that’s simply a cost too high for the crime. It’s just that fundamental, and so I cannot vote for this.”
He added that the ordinance should be more specific on what types of vendors it targets.
“If you don’t want the guy selling the (rides on the) ponies, then say that in this proposal. If you don’t want the boot camp, then say that in this proposal. If you don’t pit bull training, then say that in this proposal,” he said.
Councilmen Jose Huizar and Curren Price also cast dissenting votes.
Councilman Mitch O’Farrell defended the ordinance, which was advanced out of the Arts, Parks and River Committee that he chairs.
He said it’s “well-thought-out, it’s well explained and it’s not draconian at all,” and “gives the city the basic protection that we’ve needed for years and years.”
City Attorney Valerie Flores said making park vending illegal “will encourage people to apply for their permitting, so that we have some assurance that activities taking place in the park is safe.”
Mike Dennis of the East Los Angeles Community Corporation, which advocates for street vendors, told City News Service that restoring the ban before a street vending permitting program has been put in place “seems kind of backward.”
The ban, he said, would be “really disastrous for the vending community” that is made up of “low-income entrepreneurs.”
— Wire reports