Fayetteville City Council members have differing ideas about what the city should do to prevent shopping carts from being dumped at city bus stops and rights of way.

During a dinner meeting on Monday night before the regular council meeting, some council members said the businesses should be penalized, while others said the people who are taking the carts should be prosecuted.

The council reached no decision but agreed to debate the issue more at a future work session after it studies a formal report on the issue put out by a city intern.

 “Although I'm pro-business and I certainly don't want to hinder that, I think this is a situation where there is some responsibility in order to do business to control this,” said Councilman Dan Culliton. “I don't see how we can legislate or put that on (people taking carts). That is going to be difficult to target those individuals with everything else the police have going on.”

Councilman Johnny Dawkins said one option is for the city to create an ordinance in which businesses would be required to identify their carts and then fine those that don't retrieve their carts.

But Councilman Jim Arp said the problem is not businesses leaving carts all over the city.

“This is the business of people taking carts, so are we treating the symptom and not the problem?” Arp said. “I mean, I feel like we're going to penalize businesses who provide carts as a convenience to customers because some customers or maybe even some of our (bus stop) customers take carts.”


Mayor Mitch Colvin, who on Aug. 5 suggested the city do something about the stray carts, said he's “pro-business for sure." But he added that at some point it has to be the responsibility of businesses to make sure their carts stay on their property. He said the city needs to evaluate how many man hours are being eaten up by city staff who are picking up carts. Colvin said the city is also looking to clean up bus stops, and the stray carts left at them don't help that effort.

Councilwoman Kathy Jensen expressed her frustration with the issue. She said people have dumped numerous shopping carts from Walmart on her business property right across Ramsey Street.

“People would take shopping carts and drop them off on my property, and then just leave, and you could have 10 to 20 of them at any given time,” she said. The next day, they would leave a new cart on her property without taking the old one back, Jensen said.

She said she'd call Walmart to pick them up and the store manager would tell her not to worry about it. In the end, she said, she had to hire someone to return the carts.

Brook Redding, a Purple Heart recipient and International City/County Management fellow, has put together a detailed administrative report for the council, outlining how other cities in the state handle the issue and possible enforcement options.

He states in his report that the city of Durham spends $1.8 million a year out of its general fund for a city cleanup program that includes removing stray shopping carts. Colvin said in a previous interview that he's not interested in the city paying for the cleanup.

Redding writes that most shopping cart ordinances fall into three categories.

One requires a retailer to have a plan to contain and collect errant shopping carts, with the city not issuing a certificate of occupancy until a plan is submitted and approved. Another imposes fines and penalties on businesses ranging from $5 to $200 for errant shopping carts. Another is to require businesses to have a system in place to prevent the carts from going off their property. Some stores have technology that does not allow the carts to leave the property.

Redding writes that the enforcement of a new policy “will require proactive monitoring and enforcement” that would require new staff positions, costing the city between $60,000 to $200,000 a year. The costs can be offset by assessing penalties for code violations, surcharges on businesses providing shopping carts and establishing a citation process and administrative fines, Redding writes.

“The city of Fayetteville has received a steady increase in the number of shopping carts reported at bus stops, residential areas and empty public lots,” his report states. “The city of Fayetteville does not have a program to recover shopping carts from public property around the city. The lack of policy surrounding the issue forces several city departments to remove the carts.”
