An effort by Aurora Ald. David Marquez to expand areas where pushcart vendors can operate is meeting resistance from neighborhood groups and other city officials.
Marquez, who said the rules are hurting Latino vendors, would like to license all street vendors but allow pushcart vendors on city sidewalks.
“There’s a fairness issue that still needs to be remedied,” Marquez said. “I think we can come up with something that is satisfactory to all parties.”
Under a March 1999 ordinance, street vendors with non-motorized carts must operate on private property with the written permission of the property owner. That confined them to fixed locations.
Later in 1999, Marquez won the right for pushcart vendors to operate in certain Parks and Recreation Department and Fox Valley Park District parks, though Phillips Park, the city’s largest and most-visited park, was not included.
The regulations allow ice cream trucks and other motorized vending operations to go anywhere in the city except within 600 feet of a church or school.
Marquez said the income of Latino street vendors “has been severely reduced” as a result of the 1999 regulations, put in place after neighborhood groups complained about litter, unsanitary operations and traffic hazards.
Under Marquez’s proposal, which is based on a West Chicago ordinance, sidewalk carts would be limited to a size that would only give ice cream vendors the option of being mobile. That, he said, would address both safety and fairness issues.
All vendors would have to obtain city licenses that would require background checks, proof of $1 million in personal liability insurance and a county Health Department certificate.
His proposal would further restrict the hours vendors could operate, mandate that they carry garbage cans, require them to wear photographic identification cards and limit the number of city vendor licenses to 25.
Despite those restrictions, representatives from several neighborhood groups have showed up at council Government Operations Committee meetings to oppose changes. They say that the 1999 regulations are working and that there’s no need to address the issue again.
“It’s the neighborhood groups who essentially asked for the changes way back when, which the city did,” said Bill Catching, a spokesman for Mayor David Stover. “From the mayor’s perspective, nothing has changed, in that they still don’t want these pushcart vendors in the neighborhoods.”
Ald. Scheketa Hart-Burns, chairman of the Government Operations Committee, this week tabled Marquez’s efforts to give aldermen, Police Chief Larry Langston and community groups more time to consider changes.
Hart-Burns said Wednesday she was not sure her committee would vote on the measure.
“We may take it to the council to be denied,” she added, saying she doesn’t think the council would approve the changes.
