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Pueblo weighing ordinance to crack down on stray shopping carts. Here’s how it would work

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6 months ago

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Pueblo weighing ordinance to crack down on stray shopping carts. Here’s how it would work

Pueblo City Council will soon consider an ordinance that seeks to reduce the number of abandoned shopping carts being left throughout the city. 

The ordinance would make it unlawful for anyone to deposit or drop any shopping cart on any public or private property outside of a retail store and let it stay there; that includes streets, sidewalks, parks and alleys, among other city-owned properties.

Any person who abandons a cart in those areas, removes them from a retail store without permission, or damages or tampers with them would be subject to a $100 fine. Each day that a violation continues would be considered a separate offense. 

The ordinance would also require retail stores to “properly maintain and secure” their shopping carts to “prevent their unauthorized removal.” Furthermore, the stores would be required to retrieve them and post notices in their facilities of their responsibility to manage the carts. 

The city would retain the right to impound any abandoned cart and could assess a fee for doing so, according to the ordinance. A retail store would be notified of the impoundment and could retrieve the cart for a fee. 

If the cart isn’t picked up within thirty days after being impounded, the city could dispose of it. However, the disposal would not relieve a store of its impound fees, the ordinance states, and any retail store with outstanding or past-due fees could face a non-renewal of its business license. 

Fees collected from the ordinance would go into the city’s general fund. 

The proposed ordinance comes more than a year after city council first entertained the idea of cracking down on stray shopping carts. Some city officials have said the abandoned carts cause urban blight and pose safety hazards. 

Members of the city’s neighborhood cleanup program, Team Up to Clean Up, have collected thousands of abandoned carts around Pueblo since they started in late 2022. They’ve spoken about how time-consuming it can be to retrieve them and that, at times, the process keeps them from cleaning up other trash-heavy areas of Pueblo. 

More than 3,000 carts were removed from Pueblo retailers in 2023 alone. 

“It makes us look like a community that’s OK with that going on and allows it,” Mayor Heather Graham said last June when she was city council president. “It can be dangerous if one of the shopping carts rolls off in a busy shopping center.” 

Graham late last year began working with city staff on the ordinance, seeking to place the onus on retailers to better defend their carts. At the time, Graham said an increase in abandoned carts and a push from the community to combat the issue motivated her to seek a solution. 

As proposed, the ordinance would consider stray carts as solid waste under city code and include the aforementioned procedures. 

The city stated in its background paper for the ordinance that local retailers “generally” have refused to pick up their abandoned carts, citing “labor issues and company policy.” There are some exceptions, however — Walmart previously stated that it is open to recovering stolen carts. 

The city also stated that it believes the fees could encourage retailers to be more proactive about securing their carts and recovering them if found abandoned.

In recent years, other Colorado cities, such as Cañon City and Lone Tree, have passed their own ordinances regulating stray shopping carts.

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Chieftain reporter Josué Perez can be reached at JHPerez@gannett.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @josuepwrites. Support local news, subscribe to The Pueblo Chieftain at subscribe.chieftain.com.

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