SALISBURY, Md. -- Shopping carts are being abandoned all over the place in Salisbury. It's caught the attention of city leaders and they've had enough.
Officials are working up legislation to get those carts back home and off the streets. At the City Council meeting on June 10th, officials held a first reading for the ordinance.
If passed, the legislation would make it illegal for anyone to temporarily or permanently remove a shopping cart from a store's property. The only time someone could take a cart is with written permission from the store's owner, and the cart would need to be returned within 72 hours.
Some of the onus will fall on shop owners though. Owners will need to clearly mark their carts with the name of the business. They will also need to put up signage letting people know the removal of carts is against city law.
The city will have the right to impound lost, stolen and abandoned shopping carts. For every cart impounded by the city, a business owner could be fined $25.00.
The reason the city is taking such a strict approach against stolen carts, is because of how often it happens.
Joe Bean, owner of Grocery Outlet Bargain Market, experiences it all the time.
"There's a problem, about every two and a half weeks, three of us have to pile up into my truck and go out and look at the local hotels and everything and pick them up," said Bean.
Some of those carts end up behind America's Best Value Inn, a hotel directly next to Bean's shopping center. When we went out there on Tuesday, there were only two carts: one from Wal-mart, one from Target.
But Shane Smith who works at the hotel said there's a good explanation.
"The reason there's only two carts here now is because we had to use our own money and rent a U-Haul," said Smith. "We took two loads, it was almost 70 carts."
Despite the hotels best efforts, the problem hasn't stopped yet.
"The property is always overrun with abandoned carts, it doesn't matter we'll clean it up you give it a week or two and you'll have another pile of them," said Smith.
This issue will have to be brought up for a second time in an upcoming City Council meeting before officials can vote and ultimately pass any ordinance. If they do pass it, the legislation will go into effect the day it's signed.
