The issue of street vendors and street hawkers has always been something of a sore spot for city councilors. On Tuesday, the issue got downright contentious.
There was Barbara Haller’s one-time effort to ban street vendors to a distance of more than 500 feet from residences in town (a response to the problematic El Delicioso truck); when Worcesteria pointed out that the move would prohibit some potentially OK businesses from the CitySquare area, Haller wrote us a letter saying her request was “meant to suggest ways of reforming the present regulations and of highlighting the problem -- residential harm, especially during usual family time and sleeping hours.
“Rather than accepting that negative side effects of street vendors are necessary so as to receive good economic and recreational benefits, I believe that we can improve the licensing regulations and significantly lessen affronts to residential quality of life.”
Then there was Mayor Konstantina Lukes’s move several months ago to regulate street vendors downtown; her motion was mostly directed at a transient food vendor who was operating with too few regulations and licenses, said Lukes, and harming other “permanent” businesses with an unfair competitive advantage of not having to pay rent or fees.
Tuesday night, the city manager’s staff presented a revised street hawker ordinance that would impose new regulations on hawkers and vendors under different categories. One rule, for instance, would force vendors who park on public streets to move every five minutes; another would prohibit vendors from operating from midnight to 5 a.m. Another portion of the ordinance would prohibit vendors downtown between Lincoln Square and Federal Square; yet another would prevent vendors from selling goods within 500 feet of a business that sells the same thing, including food.
Still, Councilors Frederick Rushton and Gary Rosen questioned whether the law was going too far. “It doesn’t look like it’s for a city of 180,000 — it looks like using a cannon to kill an insect — it looks like an ordinance that’s written for a small town,” said Rushton, who held the vote until next week.
And Rosen, speaking about the longtime vendor at Elm Park, said “I can’t let [one] awful operation affect [this one].”
Even Mayor Lukes, who at several points gave an exasperated huff at Rushton’s repeated comments, admitted, “Maybe this is overkill,” but said it didn’t matter. “If we don’t do this, we’ll have empty storefronts — people moving out.”
She responded to Rushton’s claims that other cities allow vendors: “We don’t have the density downtown that will support that coexistence. If you put canteens on Shrewsbury Street, this hall would be filled and you know it — the political pressure [would kill it].”
City Manager Michael O’Brien and City Solicitor David Moore defended the rules, and joined Mayor Lukes in an effort to get some sort of vote pushed through immediately. But Rushton, who complained that he hadn’t gotten a copy of the ordinance until the night before, held strong, saying it was unfair to “drop it on us like it’s the end of the world.”
The debate wasn’t only contentious between Lukes and Rushton. Saying that parking food vendors in front of multi-million-dollar restaurants would harm business, Councilor Phil Palmieri made a comment about Councilor Rosen and “what [he] was doing with a hot dog stand.” (Rosen used to operate a foodcart.)
Rosen complained, the mayor silenced him and reprimanded Palmieri, who said Rosen “shouldn’t take it personally.” o
