Bellevue ordinance would fine retailers for not collecting runaway shopping carts

Rogue shopping carts are plaguing the city of Bellevue: They are left by lampposts, pushed deep into landscaping and abandoned on sidewalks.

City officials are tired of seeing a kaleidoscope of blue, purple, red and black carts outside of parking lots and shopping-cart corrals, pointing out that stray carts add a sense of neglect to a neighborhood.

But wrangling the carts that collect at apartment complexes and clutter bus stops, especially around Crossroads Shopping Center, is harder than it may seem.

Liz Krzyminski is a Bellevue code-compliance officer who monitors cart complaints as part of her job. She's seen two men wheeling a cart with a television down Northeast Eighth Street from Sears on 148th Avenue Northeast, and a man near Bellevue Community College pushing a child in a Marshalls department-store cart. The store is on 148th Avenue Northeast in Redmond, almost three miles away.

"Reality is stranger than fiction," she said.

Bellevue has been studying the issue since 2006, and other cities like Renton and Burien have adopted laws to try to corral carts. It's already misdemeanor theft under state law if the cart has been labeled.

Today, the Bellevue City Council is considering an ordinance that would fine stores that don't collect carts, make taking a cart more than 100 feet from store property a civil infraction, and require signs to educate people about the law.

But herding stray carts is similar to herding felines.

The issue is more prevalent around urban areas, but any location with transit, where people are on foot and want to take groceries from the store to the bus or back to their apartments, can experience a problem.

In Portland, grocers came together and started a cart-collection service that sweeps the metropolitan area six days a week, 10 hours a day, and picks up 3,000 carts a month, said Joe Gilliam, the Northwest Grocery Association's president.

If nongrocers with shopping carts joined the service, he estimates the number would grow to 6,000 a month.

In Bellevue, some retailers have tried wheel locks, which use a radio signal and a transmitter on a cart wheel, Gilliam said. Once the cart is out of the radio signal, it locks up on the wheel. But the system is expensive to install, and the wheels are costly to replace.

Plus, some people go out of their way to take the cart with them. Gilliam has seen people pop a wheelie to lift the locked wheel off the ground.

"I've seen people pushing the cart down the street with the wheel dragging," he said. "With that amount of effort, you may as well pick up the bags and walk."

In Washington, the state misdemeanor-theft law also is difficult to enforce because shopping-cart owners are unlikely to testify in court against their customers or dedicate the time to do so, according to a Bellevue city staff memo on the issue. It also is hard to establish intent.

Meanwhile, Krzyminski hears complaints from drivers who spot carts clustered at a bus stop that they are unsightly and from residents who say retailers don't respond quickly enough to calls to pick them up. Retailers say they collect carts as often as they can but note that it is theft to take a cart off their property.

Crossroads is the center of the city's cart conundrum. The neighborhood has about 3,300 multifamily units, the city says.

Top Food & Drug has enough problems with getting carts back that its location at the mall is one of three in Washington where the company hires a service to pick up carts, said spokeswoman Becky Skaggs.

"We want them back," she said.

QFC sends employees daily to collect carts in some locations, said spokeswoman Kristin Maas. Clerks also accompany people out as much as possible. But options like wheel locks are impractical at complexes like Crossroads where the store shares space with other retailers.

"We do our best, but the bottom line is they are being removed illegally and we can't stop everyone," she said.

The maintenance man at Pacific Village Condominiums on 154th Avenue Northeast, across from the mall, takes seven or eight carts back to Crossroads once or twice a month, said property manager Tony Zarkos, who has had trouble getting some retailers to pick carts up.

It's against house rules to leave shopping carts on the property, Zarkos said. The collection of carts, which grows in summer months, clutters the recycling area.

"It's a nuisance and an eyesore and a problem," he said.

Some of the problem could be resolved by shoppers, of course, notes Krzyminski.

"The bottom line is if you take something that doesn't belong to you, take it back," she said. "It's got wheels."

Nicole Tsong: 206-464-2150 or ntsong@seattletimes.com