SANTA ANA – In one block of West Bishop Street between South Flower and South Shelton streets – a stretch that includes Lowell Elementary School – four self-proclaimed “produce” trucks sat open for business on a recent afternoon, catering to the afterschool crowd.

The items most students, as well as young children accompanied by their mothers, were buying weren’t apples and lettuce, however, but rather soda and processed snacks such as Takis, spicy-hot rolled corn tortilla chips.

One truck offered five types of toy guns.

“You can see what the biggest seller is – the junk food,” Hector Espinoza, 54, who lives a quarter-mile away, said Thursday. “We don’t eat off the trucks and we don’t want our kids to.”

Espinoza walked the block along with a half-dozen other Santa Ana residents and Councilman Jose Solorio, pointing out health and safety hazards they say food trucks have been posing for years. The community members hope Solorio will be joined by other council members Tuesday in adopting an ordinance that would place new regulations on mobile food vending vehicles.

The City Council held a public hearing on the matter Feb. 7 and continued the item to Tuesday, when another hearing will be held.

“Here you have multiple trucks, crates, garbage, a generator that makes noise,” Solorio said during the walk-through Thursday.

A staff report states city traffic engineering staff found that vending trucks in the vicinity of schools, parks and community centers encouraged children to cross streets mid-block, and that lines could block sidewalks and force pedestrians to detour onto the street.

Further, the Santa Ana Police Department reported that vending trucks have attracted people engaged in narcotics sales and that vending employees and, more frequently, other individuals use them to hide illegal activity.

“A few families (in the vending business) bring health issues, safety issues, crime issues, you name it,” said Irma Macias, a 40-year Santa Ana resident. “It’s not worth it.”

The new ordinance includes more than a dozen operational requirements “to ensure safety and prevent traffic hazards.” They include no vending within 500 feet of a school, park, community center or public playground; within 100 feet of a marked or unmarked crosswalk; in public streets, alleys or highways with a posted speed limit of 35 miles per hour or greater; and no flashing neon or electronic displays that could distract drivers.

But vending truck owners aren’t staying silent.

Sara Mejia, 33, who owns the truck Wendy Produce with her husband on West Bishop Street, said she sells bananas, cucumbers, tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables, though they aren’t as prominently displayed as chips and candy.

Mejia said she used to work packing tortillas from nighttime to dawn and that she left that job to run the food truck because she can sell food directly outside her apartment and easily check on her young children.

“Working here helps me have more time with my kids and I can make money for them to eat,” she said in Spanish. “For me, it’s important to watch to see them grown. At this age, we have to be careful about gang influence.”

The public hearing on proposed regulations on mobile food vending will be held during the city council meeting Tuesday beginning at 5:45 p.m. at 22 Civic Center Plaza.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7762 or jkwong@ocregister.com or on Twitter: @JessicaGKwong