Citizen Melissa Paterniti presents shopping cart proposal to Jamestown City Council (January 8, 2024)
Jamestown City Council has heard a proposal to deal with abandoned shopping carts.
Citizen Melissa Paterniti presented to council members at their January 8 work session a law that had been passed by a municipality in the state of Washington in 2023.
She said the law would prompt stores to retrieve lost, stolen, and abandoned shopping carts, which would promote public safety while improving the image of the city, “The owners would be responsible for paying a fine to the city. There’s also, as you read and look at it, it says there’s different kinds of violations. This one here is $100 a shopping cart. It doesn’t have to be $100. It could be whatever the city would like to set it at. And after 12 shopping carts in a month it goes up to $200.”
Paterniti pointed out that Tops Grocery Markets have a kind of geofence installed that locks the wheels of their carts to prevent the carts from leaving the stores’ parking lots.
Council member at large Jeff Russell said the abandoned shopping carts issue “gets under his skin” and called it an “epidemic” in the city, “So, I would agree with you that it’s a problem that needs to be solved. I like this idea. I do see under ‘Section E – Enforcement Personnel: Any police officer or Code Enforcement Inspector, or designated staff employed by the city’ as who can enforce it. I definitely think this is something that we should have discussions about going forth.”
Russell added that a deposition from an affected store would be required in order to arrest someone for stealing a cart.
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