California city slaps grocery stores with fines over growing cart nuisance
They’re pushing back.A fed-up Southern California town is fighting the growing, unattractive “nuisance” of abandoned shopping carts — by slapping scofflaw businesses that don’t pick up after their customers with steep fines.The city council of Wildomar, a small suburb about an hour and a half from Los Angeles and just next door to on-the-grow Lake Elsinore, voted 5-0 to adopt a new ordinance to deal with the rising scourge afflicting many area communities.
Guidelines were created to reduce the numbers of unsightly blockages on public rights of way — and to strictly limit where carts can go outside the shopping centers where they belong, the The Valley News reported.The new, anti-“nuisance” rules were said to come after numerous complaints from the public about the eyesores, which can block sidewalks, interfere with drainage systems, and create safety hazards for pedestrians and motorists.Businesses like Albertsons and Barons Market operating in the town of roughly 37,000 will now reportedly be on the hook for fines of $100 per flout.
Wildomar joins other Golden State towns in its impatience with the unsightly inconvenience.Last year, Eureka, California passed a new rule that will charge businesses for any shopping carts city employees are forced to return to their stores.Big box stores like Walmart and Target are now reportedly being billed an $80 per-incident fee for the favor.
Another SoCal city, Brawley in Imperial County, also unanimously approved an ordinance last year designed to address their own problems with carts.“They become potential health hazards and really interfere with some of the pedestrian and vehicular traffic within our city,” Brawley police chief Jimmy Duran said at the time.Other cities statewide that have clapped back on the cart scourge include Duarte, Glendale, and Fortuna.The push comes in the wake of a bill passed in Sacramento last year to allow city workers to return abandoned carts to retailers immediately, ...