City Council OKs ordinance, incentive program to limit abandoned shopping carts
Jul. 15—The Bakersfield City Council unanimously approved an ordinance Wednesday that requires retail establishments to implement "containment plans" for their shopping carts, aiming to curtail what Councilwoman Patty Gray characterized as a black mark on the city.
"We're trying to prevent the blight that we're seeing," she said, "the public hazard of abandoned shopping carts all over the city."
These plans must be implemented by new property owners by Aug. 12 and existing property owners by Feb. 8, or they will be subject to penalties such as an infraction or misdemeanor.
Also adopted was a "Smart Cart" program subsidizing noncompliant businesses' containment efforts with a one-time grant.
City Manager Christian Clegg said during the meeting that the funding will cover roughly 50 percent of each business's costs, ranging from $2,500 to $20,000 for a single property.
"Based on the range of the sizes of those different shopping centers," Clegg said, "we will be able to set aside the funds to make sure that everyone over (these) next six months has the opportunity to get that funding assistance."
The ordinance outlines several suggested plans, including installing bollards, locking carts' wheels when they leave the premises, tasking specific employees with returning carts and collecting security deposits on carts.
Jorge Medina, manager of Superior Grocers on Union Avenue, said his store has locking wheels on its carts. Jeremy Ali, from Rainbow Market on Baker Street, instead assigns an employee to monitor the carts, along with preventing "clients with not (many) products" from taking them outside.
"I think the locking mechanism alone is, like, over 50 bucks," Ali said.
Richard Gearhart, an economics professor at Cal State Bakersfield, said that low-cost big-box retailers are least likely to already be compliant.
"Anything that eats into their profit margins, that are already thin, is probably not going to be something that they have a business plan for," he said.
Councilman Bob Smith told The Californian that he expects locking wheels to be the most common implementation. Gearhart agreed, noting that a security deposit could prompt consumer pushback or provide an insufficient impediment to taking the cart, and that employee monitoring could create confrontations with potential thieves.
The 50-percent mark for funding, Smith said, was likely based on assumptions that not everyone in town would need it, and that "we shouldn't fund everything."
Paul Saldaña, the city's director of economic and community development, will oversee the Smart Cart program. Clegg said it provides three avenues for financing, based on whether a store is located in an Economic Opportunity Area (EOA), Qualified Census Tract or neither. In response to a question from Councilman Andrae Gonzales, Saldaña clarified that a business in an EOA applying for Smart Cart funding will not be precluded from securing other financing afforded by its EOA status.
The ordinance was originally discussed in May, then read in June. The council had considered imposing either containment or retrieval policies but ultimately opted for containment.
"Retrieval is difficult," Smith said. "You find (it) very difficult to get them back to the correct owner, and what kind of shape are they in, so the logistics of that doesn't really make sense."
Retail establishments in California are required to display signs on their shopping carts stating that removal is illegal and outlining the process to return a lost cart; it is already unlawful to steal those carts. As outlined by city attorney Virginia Gennaro in May, Bakersfield's new ordinance simply tightens guidelines for property owners.
Smith said he expects the city to spread awareness of the policy via the media and its own social media channels.
Reporter Henry Greenstein can be reached at 661-395-7374. Follow him on Twitter: @HenryGreenstein.
