More than a year after it placed a moratorium on citing street vendors after first banning such activity in the city, Pomona is poised to legalize sales with restrictions on time and location.

Among the new regulations introduced in an ordinance this week, street vendors will have to be more than 200 feet away from the Fox Theater on a night of an event. The city’s new ordinance also eliminated the placement of tables and chairs on sidewalks, as well as using megaphones, and lighting because it creates a public nuisance, said Pomona Deputy City Manager Mark Gluba.

Street vendors will be required to obtain a business license from Pomona and a health permit from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

“A lot of what I’ve heard from some of the sidewalk vendors is they just want to know what the rules are and they want to comply with those rules because they are tired of having lived for so long out of compliance, banned, or not accepted,” Mayor Tim Sandoval during the council meeting, Monday, Oct. 7.

The council voted 6-0 to approve the first reading of the ordinance at the meeting. The ordinance is expected to come back to the council at its Oct. 21 meeting for final approval. The rules would become effective 30 days after that.

Sandoval said it will be critical that staff develop an educational campaign on the rules. He proposed staff collaborate with outside entities such as the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center.

“Our goal is not to try and penalize people because we want to be self-righteous,” Sandoval said. “There’s a place for us to partner with community organizations. That can be helpful because they’ve done so much work building trust with the community.”

Getting to this point has been a more than yearlong effort.

In July 2018, city officials announced they would implement a zero-tolerance policy on sidewalk vending after a rise in complaints. The announcement sparked some backlash and prompted Sandoval to ask that street vendors not be cited while the City Council drafted an ordinance to legalize their sales. Since then, the state Legislature’s passage of SB 956 decriminalized sidewalk vending.

Cathy Tessier, with Arteco Partners, which has 300 to 400 tenants in downtown Pomona, was in favor of the ordinance. She told elected officials it is not uncommon for there to be foot traffic downtown late at night and early into the morning after events at the Fox Theater or The Glass House.

That all changed with vendors coming to the Arts Colony downtown because of the moratorium on enforcement.

“Within a few months they have created a chaotic scene which is going until 5 a.m. or 6 a.m.,” Tessier said. “You can’t expect urban residents, as urban as they are, and ours are particularly tolerant, to survive under than onslaught. We’ve lost about a third of our tenants.”

The city has been making revisions to the ordinance, with input from the public, in recent months. Under council direction, carts must be 6 feet long and 3 feet wide, which includes wheels, axles and other vending appurtenances.

After getting input from the public, Pomona agreed to reduce the vending radius from 500 feet to 200 feet from certain locations, including:

Fox Theater one hour before and one hour after any scheduled event

Fairplex, every day of the Los Angeles County Fair

Any public or private kindergarten, elementary, or secondary (K-12) school from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. on days that school is open to students

According to the city, other restrictions include: