Will this proposal help Lexington clamp down on ‘orphaned’ shopping carts?
A committee of the Lexington council wants Mayor Linda Gorton’s administration to work with local businesses to return orphaned and abandoned shopping carts left on city streets and sidewalks.
The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council’s Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee voted unanimously Tuesday to move the resolution requesting the administration address the issue to the full council.
The resolution is a compromise after an ordinance that would have fined businesses for failing to retrieve shopping carts failed in 2021.
Lexington-Fayette Urban County Councilman David Kloiber, who had pushed the original ordinance, said he spoke to the Kentucky Retail Federation and Kroger about potential changes to the ordinance after the previous one was killed.
“They really want these carts back,” Kloiber said. The carts cost a lot of money and with supply chain issues, carts are very difficult to replace, he said.
Kloiber said he hopes the administration can figure out a way to have businesses that have a lot of carts register their contact information with the city. That way when an abandoned cart is found, a business can retrieve the carts.
The original ordinance that would have required businesses with shopping carts to retrieve those abandoned carts within 24 hours or face fines was killed in August after council members raised questions about how the local law would be enforced.
Lack of input from businesses also derailed the earlier proposal.
Negative impacts
The city long has had problems with rogue or orphaned shopping carts left on city streets, sidewalks, greenways and creeks.
But the issue came to a a head during the height of the pandemic. More than 80 orphaned shopping carts were found in the Buena Vista Road area in 2021, city officials have said.
If the shopping carts have the retailer’s name and number, the city can alert the the retailer and the shopping carts can be returned.
For example, many of the shopping carts found on Buena Vista were from Wal-Mart in nearby Hamburg. The city was able to contact Wal-Mart officials who sent staff to retrieve them.
But if the carts aren’t marked, the city has to pay its litter contractor take the shopping carts to the landfill, city officials have previously said.
“This costs the city a lot of money,” Kloiber said.
It also takes up city employee time, said Nancy Albright, the commissioner of environmental quality and public works.
If the city is able to set up a formal system to get those shopping carts back to business owners, the amount of manpower needed to oversee the program would be greatly reduced, she said.
Councilwoman Jennifer Reynolds, who represents the 11th Council District which includes much of Versailles Road corridor, said abandoned shopping carts have long been a problem in her district.
“I was at a local park and there were eight shopping carts at the entrance to the park,” Reynolds said.
The full council will take its first vote on the resolution in April. Kloiber said the council can keep shopping carts in the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee so the administration can keep the council informed and if the council may need to do more to address the shopping cart issue.
