Salisbury officials crack down on abandoned shopping carts but with one change

SALISBURY — Salisbury officials have officially cracked down on abandoned shopping carts in the city.

But Salisbury City Council changed the way the amended ordinance is enforced after hearing concerns from some, including the Maryland Retailers Alliance .

Under the amended ordinance that passed unanimously on July 22, business owners are required to post cart removal warning signs and nameplates on the carts identifying the store.

A business can provide a letter for a customer who uses a cart offsite to bring it back within 72 hours.

The city said the measure is needed because abandoned shopping carts are a “nuisance,” and create “potential hazards to the health and safety of the public and interfere with pedestrian and vehicular traffic.”

“The accumulation of wrecked, dismantled and abandoned shopping carts on public and private property creates conditions that reduce property values and promote blight and neighborhood deteriorations within the city,” the amended ordinance states.

But some retailers like Aldi will not be penalized like they would have been under a prior proposal that was tabled.

Housing & Community Development Director Muir Boda said during a June work session that code compliance officers would immediately remove abandoned shopping carts and place them into city storage. When they collect 10 shopping carts for one business, they would take them back to the retailer with a fine of $25 per cart.

“We hope that this would encourage businesses with shopping carts to either develop processes to reduce the number of carts leaving their property or become proactive in picking up their carts around the city, “Boda said in a letter to the council.

But the Maryland Retailers Alliance wrote in a previous letter to the city that it was concerned with the proposed ordinance, and supported the development of a system that allows retailers to provide contact information to the city so that businesses can work together with the community to collect carts before a fine is issued.

Additionally, the alliance wrote the proposed ordinance did not give retailers time to collect the carts from the city’s storage lot or the cart’s abandoned location before they would be fined.

After hearing the concerns, city staff added language to the amended ordinance before its passing that for “each lost, stolen or abandoned shopping cart impounded by the city, the city shall issue a $25 fine to the cart owner, unless the cart owner can demonstrate it took adequate procedures to prevent cart abandonment, loss or theft as determined by the city director or his or her designee.”

Council President D'Shawn Doughty said during a July 8 meeting that the prior proposal would have penalized businesses that already had measures in place to deter shopping carts from being removed.

For example, Aldi uses a system where customers must unlock carts by sticking a quarter in a slot. Once carts are returned to the cart area and locked back in place, the coin used to unlock the cart is returned to the customer.

The amended ordinance goes into effect immediately.

Sarah Price, on behalf of the Maryland Retailers Alliance, thanked the council for hearing the organization’s concerns.

“I learned just today, actually, that the lead time on ordering shopping carts for a retailer is at least six months if not longer, so everyone would love to be able to keep their carts on their property, if at all possible,” Price said.

Reach Managing Editor Richard Caines at rcaines@iniusa.org.