KTVU-TV

TULARE, CALIFORNIA

Tulare city officials are trying to make amends after a code enforcement officer shut down an 8-year-old girl's lemonade stand.

Richard Garcia spotted Daniela Earnest selling fresh-squeezed lemonade from a stand she and her stepmother set up at a busy intersection. She had hoped to raise money for a family trip to Disneyland.

But Garcia told the girl she couldn't operate because she lacked a city-issued business license.

Vice Mayor Philip Vandegrift says the city is now considering requiring lemonade stand operators to pay a nominal fee or waiving the fee for young children after Monday's incident.

And the girl and her family are heading to Disneyland this weekend.

A Visalia radio station gave them free passes -- in return for 30 cups of lemonade.

Comments (4)

Hppycmpr35: ... To be fair... I forwarded a more complete version of this story a few days ago. The intersection was known for many collisions and the code enforcement officer used discretion in having her move without citation but warned her of problems, Family went to the press, got paid off by radio station, and of course LEO are the bad guys. 1 August 10, 2009 deftac: Clarification Hppycmpr35, Thanks for the additional information. It was sounding real bad for the home team for a moment. 2 August 11, 2009 EDEV: ... Fair? No, it is not fair to refer to a code enforcement officer as a cop. In Ohio, anyway, code enforcement officers are not LEO's. I don't know about California. (Apologies to any CEO who is also a LEO.) 3 August 11, 2009 Bull: ... Yeah I was wondering that myself, is the Code Enforcement Officer really a cop? Excuse my ignorance. 4 August 16, 2009

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