CommentsEASTSIDER-The September GPNC meeting was packed to the gills. Even more unusual, the guts of the meeting (and reason for a 50+ turnout) was . . . Street Vendors. And they were pissed.
If you will pardon the characterization, September’s meeting of the Glassell Park Neighborhood Council was a real food fight. I hadn’t been to a GPNC meeting for a while, but evidently at the August meeting a local land use expediter named Bradley (no last name), sent a letter to the NC complaining that the community is becoming overrun with unlawful, unlicensed, and unpermitted sidewalk street vendors, and asked the Neighborhood Council to weigh in on helping him with this weighty problem.
As we will see later in this article, the fact is that LA City has not yet finalized its Street Vendor Ordinance with staffing, fees, and permanent rules and regulations. That is all supposed to happen effective January 2020. But I digress.
Thanks to a very neat and interesting, food, art, and events blog called LA Taco, we have an eyewitness description of the September meeting. The caption of the article is “‘Little Tijuana:’ Drama Erupts at Neighborhood Council Meeting over Backlash to Street Vendors in NELA.”
As an attendee myself (on another item), I can attest to the events that took place, and street vending indeed accounted for most of the meeting. I really recommend that you read the article (and hey, it even has pictures). I also happen to agree wholeheartedly with their main takeaway:
“This hyper-local issue may offer a peek into the future of legalized street vending and the issues that may arise for vendors, residents, and businesses. Proponents of street vendors argue that legalization is not decriminalization and that a lot of street vendors who are undocumented will not have a pathway to obtain permits.”
I think/hope that the meeting was a wake-up call for the Neighborhood Council, who were clearly not prepared for a rock ’n roll no-holds-barred uncivil civil protest. It was also evident that the representatives of our Council members, Mayor, and elected Congress critters, had no clue as to what was happening.
A review of current GPNC Council meetings and their agendas demonstrate how Glassell Park (and probably the neighboring communities in Northeast LA) have become overwhelmingly gentrified, with all the development, disenfranchisement, and dumping of longtime residents that is associated with the build, build, build phenomenon.
On this evening, the NC was caught without any translation services for Spanish speaking attendees, while “back in the day” they were routinely provided. I say this because it reflects the reality that very few Spanish language-only people currently attend GPNC meetings. Now the City evidently makes the Neighborhood Council “pay” for this basic community tool, which tells you a lot about LA City and DONE, as well as what gentrification and development have done to our neighborhoods. Sad.
Background
Full disclosure, I haven’t really paid much attention to the City’s “efforts” to regulate sidewalk street vendors for a very long time. I do remember, back in the day when I was living in Lincoln Heights and Gloria Molina was in her prime, the County treated street vending as essentially a health and safety issue. The cure was to staff up the Health Department and provide checks that the foods being sold met with basic health metrics.
In Los Angeles City itself, the politicians have been putzing around with street vendors for at least a decade that I can remember. During that time, it was not unusual to go to City Hall on a Council Meeting day and see mass vendor protests across the street as the Council pretended to address the core issues of street vending and make pronouncements.
This all got serious in 2017 after President Trump made war on immigrants (and anyone he did not think was “white”). In February 2017, the City Council unanimously voted to “decriminalize” street vending.
Previously, street vendors risked being charged with a misdemeanor for trying to make a living selling goods or food. And remember, even a misdemeanor gives the Feds a paper trail to try and do bad things to anyone here without documentation.
As near as I can tell, in 2018, the Council decided to adopt a “framework” for permitting street vending. In April 2018 they directed the City Attorney to draft an Ordinance to set up a permit system.
State Intervention and the City Council
While the City Council was emulating Nero playing his violin while Rome burned, the State of California intervened with a preemptory Senate Bill 946 in 2018. You can find the full text here, and the legislation forced LA City into action;
The key provision in the seven pages of the bill’s small print is:
“This bill would prohibit a local authority, as defined, from regulating sidewalk vendors, except in accordance with the provisions of the bill. The bill would provide that a local authority is not required to adopt a new program to regulate sidewalk vendors if the local authority has established an existing program that substantially complies with the provisions of the bill. The bill would apply these provisions to a chartered or general law city, county, or city and county.”
As to the “final” Ordinance which was voted out by the City Council 14-0, as a result of the State preemption, the November Ordinance wound up being more of a framework than a polished law with the bells and whistles. As I discovered thanks to a blog la.eater.com, which lists the framework as follows:
- Over the next 12 months, the City of Los Angeles will implement a citywide permit program. These permits will allow vendors to reserve specific locations.
- The ordinance grants a one-year period while the City works out the details of the permit program. They’ll also hire a service provider to conduct education and outreach to sidewalk vendors, while assisting them with the permit application process.
- There are strict rules on where vendors can operate. Street vendors are not allowed near large event venues like the Staples Center, or the Los Angeles Coliseum, where street vendors were forcibly removed from sidewalks and parking lots during a November 11 Rams game.
- In city parks, there will be a two vendor per acre rule.
- Bureau of Street Services will provide enforcement for sidewalk vendors. Park Rangers will oversee enforcement of vendors at parks.
- Rules, regulations, and requirements will be determined by the Department of Public Works.
- There is no cap on the number of vendors.
- Vendors will be required to obtain a business license, tax, and health permits.
- Vendors not in compliance with the law will be cited and fined by the Department of Street Services.
By the way, it’s a pretty cool foodie site, and you might want to consider turning off your ad blocker and/or subscribing.
Finally, it appears that the City is not done yet, for all that we were told there would be a one-year time out prior to implementing the Ordinance, so that the vendors could be brought up to speed. I say this having found a CAO Report dated September 16, 2019 which is now recommending an annual fee of $541, and further states that:
“BSS will release a separate report detailing the proposed permit structure, rules and regulations, and staff deployment plan.”
So much for finality.
The Takeaway
Other than ignoring a growing problem, my takeaway is that there are two seriously competing visions as to dealing with street vendors here in Los Angeles.
The first, traditional concept that LA is pursuing is to regulate street vending with a bureaucratic permit and enforcement process. To be fair, local businesses who have to lease a storefront along our sidewalks are legitimately worried that vendors cost them business. Also, there is the question of enforcing our basic food safety requirements so that no one gets inadvertently sick.
The old way of basically ignoring the problem except for food safety inspections, does not mandate written documentation for permits, not to mention an annual fee of over $500. Aside from the written registration issues I don’t pretend to know how many street vendors have $500 to buy in, but it seems a bit steep for many who spent every cent they had just to get here, and are trying to subsist by selling tacos or other food on the sidewalks of LA.
I won’t over quote from the LATaco blog, but I was at the GPNC meeting and heard the very moving story by Alex Ramirez, who is now a real chef. It raises real issues and makes a reread of their article a good idea.
I can only hope that all of the representatives of the Mayor and Council Offices (and maybe even the police officers standing in the back of the room) go back to their constituencies and take another look at the pending finalization of the LA City Street Vending Ordinance.
(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
