For several weeks now, there has been a man selling fruit (mangos, strawberries, oranges, etc.) on the corner in my Cascade Park neighborhood. He isn’t there every day; I believe he comes just on weekends. Are people allowed to sell items on the street in a residential area? My family has noticed other people selling fruit in the same manner as this man but in other residential neighborhoods. Is this a legitimate business?
—Kathy, Cascade Park
Legitimate or not, Kathy, the city isn’t terribly interested in cracking down on the fruit man — unless he’s causing real problems.
Cindy Meyers, the city’s code compliance supervisor, did acknowledge that what the fruit man is doing is a potential misdemeanor, punishable by a $250 fine.
Vancouver Municipal Code section 11.60 “requires vendors, including those who sell food and beverages on a public street, to have a license,” Meyers said, and VMC section 5.50.080 requires police officers to enforce the law regarding licensing of “peddlers, solicitors and canvassers.”
There’s the rub: “It is enforceable only by a police officer,” said Meyers. “You can be found guilty of a misdemeanor violation. That’s outside the scope of code compliance.”
Meyers is pretty sure she’s already heard from Kathy in Cascade Park and knows some background: There was a 911 call about the fruit man, but police never arrived. Police have been seen driving past the fruit man without stopping.
So we took the question to Vancouver police spokeswoman Kim Kapp. She pointed out that a state law trumps the local one: RCW 36.71.090 exempts farmers and gardeners who are peddling their own produce from local licensing requirements. (That covers “fruits, vegetables, berries, eggs or any farm produce,” according to the law, but not meat, dairy and fish.)
And there’s the second rub: How can police tell if the fruit man is selling only fruit he grew himself? They can’t — not without investigation. And if the fruit man isn’t causing real trouble — harming a neighbor, blocking the street, pitching bananas at passing cars — police probably aren’t going to make investigating him a high priority, Kapp said.
“It’s not an emergency,” she said. “There are emergency calls and there are matters where people are annoyed. We’re facing huge reductions in staff right now. If it’s not problematic, it would be considered a low priority in today’s world of police work and the challenges we’re facing.”
Patrol officers have helped various street vendors find ways to co-exist peacefully with traffic, but have issued no infractions and undertaken no investigations, Kapp said.
If police staffing is one side of this coin, Meyers suggested that the other is unemployment and economic stress.
“A lot of people are trying to make a living any way they can,” said Meyers. “As long as they are not creating a public safety hazard, I would expect the response to be … that’s a pretty low priority.”
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