One of the many strange things about Eureka is that our grocery stores are punished for having their shopping carts stolen.  In fact the current ‘retrieval and delivery fee’ is a flat $50 fine for each offense.  This raises food prices on working people.  Will you stop this policy if elected?

 

 

— Anthony M

Responses

Anil Dwivedi

Yes, I would revisit this policy.

Businesses should take reasonable steps to manage and recover their shopping carts, but if a cart is stolen, I don’t believe our first response should be to punish the business that was the victim of the theft.

A $50 fee may sound small, but repeated costs ultimately become another expense of doing business and those costs can be passed on to customers, including working families already struggling with grocery prices.

As Mayor, I would ask the Council to review this ordinance and replace unnecessary penalties with a practical approach that brings the City, retailers, and community partners together to get abandoned carts off our streets quickly.

Government should solve problems, not create another bill for the people already dealing with them.

 

Anil Dwivedi

Casey Dresser

It is absolutely ridiculous to penalize the businesses whose carts are being stolen and not the people doing the stealing. Should the stores be required to spend the money to hire private security guards to protect their carts during business hours? Guess who will pay for that? The customers. We will. We talk about supporting local business, but this sounds like the opposite of that. We talk about grocery prices being too high, then we charge the grocery stores for having their property stolen. This makes no sense, unless the goal of city leadership is to drive away business here. If we want a thriving town, we need to support the stores that serve our community. Not penalize them, for a problem we allow (and even encourage). We need to get our priorities straight. The people who serve our community should be rewarded and treated with reverence and the people who tear our community down should face consequences. Not the other way around.

Kim Bergel

I spend a lot of time on our trails and will say that they, as well as some of our streets are littered with shopping carts. It has  been so bad that several years ago then Chief Andy Mills appointed a Shopping Cart Tsar to mitigate the problem. At that time we looked at many opportunities for stores to manage their carts, from lock wheels,so that carts can’t leave the parking lot, to just keeping them in at night.

Only a few stores are bad actors, many of these are corporate.

When I go to other areas this issue does not seem to rise to the issue it is here in Eureka. 

This is a topic that has been discussed for the last 10 years.

I agree food costs are going up, Anthony and believe there are larger issues than this fee driving this increase.  I am always available to discuss this further. 

I would not change this ordinance at this time. If folks have questions on how to better manage their carts, please call me. 707-616-2178

 

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