Council Toughens Shopping Cart Ordinance

By Kurt Helin

Editor

Saying that the problem of abandoned shopping carts in the city is not getting any better, the City Council voted last week for a tougher ordinance that puts the onus on the grocery stores and retail stores to keep their carts at the stores.

The new ordinance allows immediate citations if a cart is found abandoned off of a store’s premises — if more than 10 are found in a 30-day period from one store, representatives of the grocer or retailer will have to meet with the city. If the problem persists, the issue will go to the City Prosecutor for possible criminal action against an owner or executive with the store.

“I think the council said (last year) let’s give the grocers a chance with a cart retrieval system,” said First District Councilwoman Bonnie Lowenthal. “It hasn’t worked. It’s worse than ever.”

Last year, the council approved a system where when a cart is found, city staff has to notify the grocery store of the abandoned cart (with photographic evidence) and give the store 24 hours to retrieve the cart. If it was not picked up, the city could issue an administrative citation. Some area stores hired cart retrieval companies to pick up those carts.

But a recent Saturday sweep by city staff found 626 abandoned shopping carts on city streets. That was down 10% from the 699 found last year, but council members said that was still far too many carts on the street. The largest violators in the most recent sweep were the Top Value markets (175 carts), Ralphs (161) and Vons (147).

Much of the debate before the City Council centered on whether the city should focus its efforts on the stores or on the individuals who take the carts.

Managers of several stores said that they should not be responsible for people walking off with their carts. One Target store manager said they have an electronic system that clamps down on a wheel when people take the cart off the Target lot, but that people just use a tool to take the clamp off.

“I do have an issue that we have not made it clear to residents that having a cart is illegal,” said Seventh District Councilwoman Tonia Reyes-Uranga.

But other council members questioned the wisdom of having police officers tasked with writing tickets to people with shopping carts rather than paying attention to their other duties.

City staff argued that the problem needs to be stopped with retailers.

“It is our position that this is a retailer problem and we want to work with them to solve it,” Dennis Thys, manager of the Neighborhood Services Bureau, told the council.

City Attorney Robert Shannon noted that the stores — who strongly prosecute shoplifters — don’t do that with people who take carts.

“If they (the stores) are willing to prosecute it (the city) would be willing to prosecute it,” Shannon said. “If they don’t, we can’t.”

Second District Council-woman Suja Lowenthal said grocery and retail chains just accept the loss of carts (and the associated money) as part of doing business because it allows people to take more or larger items home if the person don’t have a car or live near a store.

The one change the City Council made to the ordinance was to take store managers off the list of those liable if concerns about a problem store are sent on to the City Prosecutor. Several store managers — backed by a couple council members — said that the cart issue is dealt with at a regional level and their bosses never even told them about the existing Long Beach cart ordinance.

The council passed the tougher standards unanimously.