Last Monday night, City Council enacted a new ordinance
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to require businesses to prevent customers from strolling off a
store’s property with shopping carts.
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Last Monday night, City Council enacted a new ordinance “to require businesses to prevent customers from strolling off a store’s property with shopping carts.”
Our home is on a corner lot on Church Street, and occasionally a shopping cart will show up on the planting strip on the Church Street side. It’s a minor annoyance, and they usually disappear within a few days to whereabouts unknown.
As well all know now, these carts run more than $100 each for the store. One local store is losing 2K a month worth of carts; that’s not an inconsiderable sum.
Several local stores like Safeway and Wal-Mart, which have the boot, and Nob Hill, a store which consistently corners the market on polite, well-scrubbed teenagers (which is why we shop there) assists customers with carts to their cars, have the problem handled.
Others do not, and the carts wind up everywhere, including the alleys, creeks, highways and byways around town. We all also consistently see them in the possession of our cadre of urban campers. City workers are forced to essentially clean up the mess of commercial establishments that should do so themselves. This is unacceptable; not only is that solution expensive, it takes time from their other duties that benefit us all.
The new ordinance will receive a vote for final approval on May 16. It provides that stores that don’t adopt the boot, a pretty expensive solution which about doubles the cart cost, will get a free ride for one collection of a single cart in a three-month period, and if they exceed that limit, the stores will be forced by law to upgrade to the boot.
I have some questions, and a possible solution. My first question is: How will the ordinance be enforced? It seems unlikely the cops will be involved. They are currently overworked, and haven’t done much with the sign ordinance. It’s hard to imagine the cops on patrol having a lot of time to worry about shopping carts. So, the job will probably fall to city staff.
Secondly, besides forcing a miscreant business to adopt the boot solution for violations, will there be an administrative fine assessed to cover the cost of the citations? I don’t think we should enact new regulations without discussion of what the cost of enforcement might be, and if there’s no enforcement, the proposed legislation becomes a waste of time and money.
Now, my proposed solution. While I’m not thinking of a clone of the annoying TV guy “Dog, the Bounty Hunter'” is there an old retired guy with a pickup truck and a cell phone reading today? Because I see a business opportunity.
Such a person could make the rounds of likely dumping grounds once or twice a day, and charge the stores that are losing hundred-dollar carts a bounty of say, $5 or $10 for their retrieval. It seems like a natural; the city could even take calls from residents and in turn call the guy to tell him where carts are located.
It wouldn’t garner a whole lot of money, but on the other hand, it might fit in well with a retiree with time on his or her hands. It’s been done before by the city, with a fast-response graffiti removal service, and the city wouldn’t even have to pay-those who have created the problem would.
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Early this week, another child was struck by a car as he walked to school. Considering our recent rash of traffic deaths, we were lucky. The child was not injured badly and will fully recover, so we can all breathe a big sigh of relief.
While I agree with Mayor Al Pinheiro that accidents will happen, this situation is beginning to take on the aspects of an epidemic, and does call for collaborative action between the school district and the city to ensure children’s safety in walking to and from school. I think children should be encouraged to walk; it’s good exercise, and one can’t pick up a newspaper today without reading a story about an epidemic of childhood obesity and type II diabetes. The best suggestion heard was the one touting flashing crosswalk lights, like those downtown, which really catch the eye.
I’m going to choose to be less politically correct than city traffic engineer Don Dey, though, who stated ” Quite frankly, we cannot overcome individual human errors.” I would have said “you can’t fix stupid.”
So, if you choose to speed in a school zone, ignore crosswalks, fail to ensure that the crosswalks are clear before proceeding, and most of all keep an eagle eye out for children when driving, this quote from one of my favorite comedians, Bill Engvall, is for you: “Here’s your sign.”
