What's at stake?
Critics of the ordinance, who were still pushing for changes to it less than 24 hours before Thursday’s meeting, said they’re fighting for a policy less “regressive” and “punitive” to the small entrepreneurs that make Fresno unique.
For some of Fresno’s mobile food vendors, the past week felt like one step forward, two steps back.
On Oct. 28, members of the Fresno City Council stood beside them, announcing long-awaited public investment in a commercial kitchen for the vendors to use. The council approved that $700,000 investment at a meeting that same week.
But in between those wins, Fresno’s mobile food vendors and their supporters scrambled to convince some of those same councilmembers to make changes to a new ordinance coming before the council for a first vote this Thursday.
The proposed policy lays out a host of new regulations on where sidewalk vendors can set up throughout Fresno as well as fines of up to $500 for violators.
Councilmember Miguel Arias, who’s co-sponsoring the new ordinance along with Councilmember Luis Chavez and Council President Annalisa Perea, told Fresnoland the legislation is primarily aimed at “out-of-town” vendors who have blocked sidewalks and failed to clean up after themselves.
“We have to have a mechanism to address these bad actors when they’re creating a public health and safety challenge for us,” he said.
Critics of the ordinance, who were still pushing for changes to it less than 24 hours before Thursday’s meeting, said they’re fighting for a policy less “regressive” and “punitive” to the small entrepreneurs that make Fresno unique.
“Luckily, we did advocate for a substantial number of changes that were about reducing the harm that this policy is going to cause on the vendors,” said Veva Islas, executive director of nonprofit Cultiva La Salud, which works closely with the city’s mobile vendors. “But there is still going to be jeopardy for vendors as a result of this policy.
What does the ordinance say?
The latest draft of the ordinance places new restrictions on where Fresno’s mobile food vendors can sell their products on sidewalks.
The law doesn’t apply to food trucks.
Under the proposed policy, vendors can’t set up:
- Within 200 feet of a freeway ramp, unless they’re set up on private property with written permission from the property owner
- Within 200 feet of a certified farmer’s market, unless they’re associated with the market
- Within 200 feet of an event that has been issued a special permit (such as Why Not Wednesday and ArtHop)
- Within 100 feet of a residence, with exceptions for vendors who sell fresh fruit, corn or snow cones
- Within 50 feet of a brick-and-mortar restaurant, unless a restaurant owner provides written permission
- Within 10 feet of another sidewalk vendor, unless both vendors waive that restriction in writing
- Within three feet of a building for vendors cooking food on-site
The ordinance also stipulates that vendors can’t set up canopies, chairs or tables for their customers. They can, however, set up a canopy to provide themselves with shade.
Vendors who violate the ordinance will receive:
- A written warning for their first violation
- A fine of up to $100 after their second violation
- A fine of up to $200 after their third violation
- A fine of up to $500 after four or more violations
The ordinance tasks the city’s Code Enforcement team as well as the Fire Department with enforcing the ordinance.
For the first six months it’s in effect, the ordinance states that no monetary citations will be issued.
Vendors will have the opportunity to appeal fines.
How did we get here?
Arias said a citywide policy on sidewalk vending has been years in the making.
He pointed to a three-month pilot program regarding Fresno’s mobile food vendors that the city implemented from August through October 2023 as laying the groundwork for the new citywide ordinance.
That program placed new restrictions on vendors in the Tower District specifically, where he said there were issues with vendors obstructing sidewalks and fights breaking out between vendors competing for space.
“During the implementation phase, all those issues were significantly reduced,” he said, “and the cleanliness of Tower has returned.”
Some advocates have questioned why Fresno doesn’t create a separate ordinance for the unique neighborhood rather than a “one-size-fits-all” approach citywide.
Perea said she doesn’t want to create an ordinance that “treats vendors one way in a part of our city and a different way in another part of our city.”
The council president also said that as a result of the Tower District pilot program last year, some vendors moved to other parts of the city to escape the new rules.
“What that told us is we needed a citywide policy.”
The restrictions on street vendors’ proximity to brick-and-mortar restaurants has been another red flag for critics, who say it creates economic protection for restaurants.
Islas said she’s worried that’s a result of the political influence the California Restaurant Association has over elected officials through campaign contributions.
“Street food vendors aren’t contributing to political campaigns,” she said.
“The Restaurant Association is well-funded, and they contribute to campaigning.”
Arias countered that “if you hear from the restaurants that are brick-and-mortars, they would argue that they’re paying a $10-15,000 PG&E bill a month that the mobile food vendor isn’t.”
“The policy is not trying to provide an advantage or disadvantage to any of the entrepreneurs. The policy is simply trying to create the basic, common-sense rules,” he added.
The race to offer feedback from Fresno’s mobile food vendors
Advocates and vendors in Fresno said they’ve been scrambling over the past few weeks to give their feedback on the new policy.
The Mobile Food Vendor Association received a copy of the first draft of the policy in late September, said Ariana Martinez-Lott, a former staffer with Arias’ office and advocate working with the association.
They were shocked at what they saw.
“The first draft wasn’t allowing street vendors to have shade in Fresno weather,” Martinez-Lott said. “That was banned under the original draft. It was banning eloteros from vending in residential areas, fruit stands that provide healthy foods to neighborhoods that you know are impacted by food desert areas.”
The vendor association has met with the city officials at least three times over the past few weeks to deliver feedback on drafts of the policy.
Several changes the vendors requested made it into the final draft. For example, the latest version of the policy added language to allow eloteros and ice cream vendors to continue vending in residential areas.
Another potential change negotiated in the hours leading up to Thursday’s meeting is a reduction to the fines a vendor can receive under the ordinance.
“The fines, in the way that they structured them, are really problematic,” Islas said, “especially when you’re considering a food vendor that makes $400 in a week.
Perea said in an interview Wednesday that the council is planning to make adjustments to the fee structure from the dais Thursday.
The city has also cut down the number of city departments responsible for enforcement from four in the original draft to two in the latest.
In the first draft, “they were letting everybody and their mother cite the vendors,” Islas of Cultiva said.
Still, vendors remain worried about not just becoming educated on the ordinance themselves, but also how city staff will be trained on it.
A vendor, who asked to remain anonymous citing fears of being targeted amid the crackdown on sidewalk vendors, said she’s received conflicting guidance from city officials inspecting her stand in the past.
About a month and a half ago, a city official inspecting her set-up said she didn’t have all her proper permits and issued her a written warning.
But when she later presented her paperwork to a city official downtown and asked what she was missing, the city employee said she had all of her proper permits.
“It almost feels as though now,” the vendor told Fresnoland through a Spanish translator, “they’re just going to be trying to find any little thing that they can get us on, that they can cite us on and to target us to discourage us from vending and to try and take our licenses away.”
Perea said making sure inspectors are “fully aware” of the new rules will be a priority going forward.
“Education is going to come in several different forms. It’s definitely going to have to involve not just informing the public (and) the mobile food vendors,” she said, “but also those that are responsible for enforcing this ordinance.”
Fresno’s complicated history with sidewalk vendors
The murder of street vendor Lorenzo Perez in 2021 was a turning point for the city’s mobile food vendor community.
After Perez was killed on the job, city leaders vowed to do more to support vendors. That included creating the Mobile Food Vendor Association to improve communication with the city, investments in vendors’ safety, and a formalized permitting process.
Earlier this month, Fresno City Council made good on another promise officials made in the wake of Perez’s murder, and that is funding for a commercial kitchen where vendors can prepare their food and ensure compliance with food safety regulations.
The city is contributing over $1 million toward Cultiva La Salud’s $3 million project to open a commercial kitchen near downtown Fresno and provide resources like security cameras to the vendors it works with.
These represent “record investments” in the mobile food vendor economy, Perea said.
Despite these contributions and the feedback the vendors were able to provide on the new ordinance, some vendors and their supporters feel “disheartened” by the city’s new proposed regulations.
“Really, those changes are just to minimize the impact. This doesn’t mean that this is a policy that is based on best practices for street vendors,” Martinez-Lott said. “This ultimately appears to be a policy that is intended to discourage and limit street vendors’ presence in our city when they have been a deep part of the fabric of what makes Fresno unique for decades.”
The ordinance is set to take effect in January 2025 if council approves it.
Islas said the policy proposal — as it stood Wednesday — still left vendors vulnerable.
“We’re going to document it,” Islas said, “and we’re going to demonstrate it, and I really hope that at some point, they understand the severity of what they’re doing, and can actually fix it.”
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