BURBANK : City Upholds Ban on Ice Cream Pushcarts

Despite the pleas of a business owner and his son, the City Council has rejected a proposal to allow the return of ice cream pushcarts, banned since March, to Burbank.

“You know how hard the ice cream vendor works?” Carlos Meier asked the City Council before it voted 4 to 1 to continue the ban on pushcarts. “They get up early every day and walk all day in the sunshine.”

As part of a Street Vendors Ordinance that went into effect in March, the city banned pushcarts, pushing out of Burbank Meier’s Ice Cream, based in Sun Valley. It had been the only licensed ice cream pushcart vendor in Burbank.

Dave Golonski, who had asked the City Council to reconsider the decision Tuesday, was the only member to vote against continuing the ban. The ordinance had been designed to eliminate entrepreneurs selling out of parked cars and trucks, and other council members said they could find no reasonable way to grant Meier an exemption.

The council considered a list of 15 possible restrictions under which Meier might be allowed to operate. The restrictions would have limited where pushcarts may go, when they operate, and also suggested establishing required attire and identification patches.

A few residents ridiculed the restrictions.

“It’s bad satire,” Burbank resident Ted McConkey said. “Here you’re taking these poor guys trying to hustle a living, trying to stay off welfare and feed their families and you are imposing more restrictions on them than on any other business.”

Meier, who had seven of his vendors in Burbank, said he lost 20% of his business when he was forced out. His business also sells throughout the Los Angeles area, including Glendale, North Hollywood and Van Nuys.

“Please let him sell his ice cream in Burbank because the people need to support their families,” Meier’s 11-year-old son, Jose, told the City Council.

In the ordinance, an exemption had been granted for ice cream trucks. Meier gave the City Council a petition signed by 300 people saying the pushcarts are safer because they do not draw children into the streets.