Street vendors worry about new rules coming to Fresno: ‘We could face a lot of dangers’

New rules regulating where and how street-food vendors can sell their fruit cups, corn, churros, hot dogs and other goodies within Fresno will be introduced by the City Council at its meeting Thursday.

The first reading of the new street vendor law comes two weeks after a stream of objections were expressed by vendors to the City Council over the sizable fines and other limitations originally proposed by Councilmembers Annalisa Perea, Miguel Arias and Luis Chavez.

Earlier this year, the council adopted rules regulating where street-cart vendors could set up and sell within city parks. The latest set of regulations, which would become law after a second reading in December and take effect in January, restricts where, when and how they can operate along city streets or private property.

The new law declares that “regulating the locations and manner of operations of vendors is necessary to protect the health, safety and welfare of the public, the vendors and their patrons” by making sure vendor carts don’t obstruct sidewalks or streets.

Street vendors and the challenges they face rose to the forefront of city leaders’ attention following the March 2021 killing of food-cart operator Lorenzo Perez in southeast Fresno. In the wake of that murder, the city in April 2022 launched an effort to equip up to 50 mobile food carts with security cameras.

Ariana Martinez Lott, a former member of Arias’ council staff and now an advocate for Fresno’s Association of Mobile Vendors, told the City Council on Nov. 7 that the vendors feared the new rules would hurt their business because the fines proposed at that point – $100 for a first offense after a written warning, $200 for a second violation, and $500 for each subsequent violation – were too high.

“During my time working with Councilmember Arias I saw this very council set a historic precedent for the way in which a city can partner with a community that has historically been disenfranchised, been victims of deadly acts of violence, and has been cast aside from the formal economy,” Martinez Lott said.

She added that the city needs to be innovative in its approach to the food-cart vendors “instead of moving forward with a policy that primarily is looking at street vendors as a nuisance needing to be regulated.”

In the new version of the ordinance being introduced Thursday, Arias provided a partial victory to the vendors by a proposed reduction of the fines following a written warning: $25 for a first offense within a year instead of $100; $50 for a second offense instead of $200; and $100 for a third offense within a year of a first citation.

The fines would not kick in for six months, except where a pilot program has already been in place in the Tower District of central Fresno.

For “egregious repeat offenders” with more than three administrative fines, the cost of subsequent fines would rise to $500.

Even the lower fines could be a hardship for the vendors, many of whom told the council that they are barely scraping by with their sales.

Martha Alvarado, who sells tamales from a food card, asked the council members through an interpreter, “Do you think as mobile vendors we are able to live off of selling $50 to $60” worth of food in a day?

Alvarado said she and other vendors also worry that their immigration status may make make them targets of hardship from fines and regulations. “I know that you (on the City Council) may not understand the situation in which we are living,” she said, “because we are hiding in the shadows with our legal status, with the stress that we are feeling, with our sales being low to the ground, (and) having to pay these fines.”

“We just want to work and contribute and to pay our taxes just like we have been,” Alvarado added. “We are not trying to make things difficult. We are just asking that you support us in our work.”

Martinez Lott said vendors’ concerns about their immigration status have only been heightened by President-elect Donald Trump’s rhetoric promising mass deportations of undocumented immigrants after he takes office in January.

Key provisions of the regulations expected to be introduced Thursday include:

• Requiring street vendors to have both a city business license and an operating permit from the Fresno County Department of Public Health, unless they have only a small display space of less than 25 square feet and are only selling prepackaged food or whole uncooked produce.
• Requiring written permission from the property owner if they are selling on private property.
• Maintaining a clean, trash-free 10-foot radius around a street vending cart, and cleaning up any grease, food or fluids that may fall on a sidewalk or public property.
• Not operating within 200 feet of a freeway on- or off-ramp unless on private property with the owner’s permission; or within 10 feet of another sidewalk vendor unless they have a written agreement to collaborate; or within 100 feet of a residence unless they are only selling fresh produce or non-prepared food items such as fruit cups, corn, snow cones, bread or tamales.
• Forbidding operation within three feet of a building or under an awning attached to a building for vendors who are cooking food.
• Operating in a manner that does not impede the use of sidewalks or limit access to adjacent properties including homes or businesses, or impede emergency access by police, fire or medical personnel., or within 18 inches from the edge of a curb.
• Not placing canopies, chairs or tables for customers, except to provide shade only for the vendor.
• Limiting the operating hours of vendors within the Tower District, bounded by McKinley, Belmont, Blackstone and Palm avenues: no vending between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. Thursdays through Sundays, and no sales after midnight.
• No vendors within 200 feet of a certified farmers market if the vendor is not associated with the farmers market.
• No vendors within 200 feet of an event for which the city has issued a temporary special permit if the vendir is not associated with the permitted event.

The limitations on where vendors can operate was another concern for some operators.

“With the laws that are being imposed, truthfully a lot of us, it’s going to make us feel the need to hide from you guys,” said Alma Gonzalez, speaking through an interpreter to the City Council. “We’re being pushed to a corner and those people with bad intentions are going to see us scared, nervous, in a corner, and we will therefore be put in a more dangerous situation where we could face a lot of dangers.”

Domingo Maria Mota, who sells soft drinks, juice and hot dogs from his cart, told the council that he and other vendors work hard and pay their taxes. “I ask you to please put your hands over your hearts and think about the laws you’re trying to impose, to please don’t make them so hard, so challenging for us,” he said through an interpreter.

“What we sell is something cultural; we sell elotes (Mexican street corn), we sell churros. This is cultural representation for us, nothing expensive, something you can buy for your children, that you could see outside of a school and purchase,” Mota added. “I ask that you see us as a small business. … I ask that you see us as who we are, we are just a small business.”

The appeals struck a chord with Councilmember Tyler Maxwell, who said he would be unable to support the ordinance as it was originally proposed on Nov. 7.

““I think when we discuss the local economy we tend to have it through the focus of white collar business and we tend to dismiss a lot of the blue-collar work that goes on that contributes to our economy,” Maxwell told his colleagues.

“I’m hearing more regulations, more fines for folks that contribute a large part to our economy,” he added. “Maybe it’s not the part of the economy that is traditionally thought about up here on the city council, but I’m seeing tears in people’s eyes, I’m hearing about how this is going to affect their parents and their children.”

Arias floated his revisions for reducing the fines and other changes after the vendors spoke on Nov. 7, but the nature of the changes meant the issue needed to be pushed off to the Nov. 21 meeting.

“We don’t do this as folks who want to punish any of the entrepreneurs,” Arias said of the proposed law. “We’re trying to keep everyone safe, and to do so we need some basic rules that apply to everyone.”

It was also Arias who suggested continuing to allow sales of fresh fruit, snow cones and other foods prepared ahead of time in residential areas

“We want to have you continue selling those things in our residential neighborhoods,” he said. “We want our kids and families to have access to fresh food in our residential neighborhoods. … But we also need to make sure that people are not cooking and using grease on residential sidewalks where kids are walking and running in their neighborhoods to ensure their safety.”

This story was originally published November 21, 2024, 5:30 AM.