Eureka Puts Businesses on the Hook for Runaway Wheels
Background image By Wanzl Metallwarenfabrik – Via WikiCommons
With wayward shopping carts littering city streets, the Eureka City Council has given the go-ahead for a new system that charges businesses for recovering and returning them.
An ordinance amendment addressing the “public nuisance” of stolen and abandoned shopping carts got initial approval at the August 5 council meeting.
The city’s current system of handling the carts was described as inefficient – carts recovered by the city are either taken to the dump or to the city’s Public Works corp yard, which recently stopped accepting them.
Cart in the back of a pickup. [Image from Eureka City Staff reports at the council meeting]
Although a fee system is in place, it has been difficult to enforce due to a lack of a formal tracking system.
The new system includes tagging and photographing recovered carts, and uploading their locations into a GIS system.
“It allows us to keep a paper trail and be transparent and be able to account for what we will be billing businesses for,” said Chief Building Official Brenden Reilly. “Carts that aren’t soiled or damaged will be returned to the home businesses — we just don’t want to be dumping things that don’t need to go to the dump, that’s just wasteful.”
Fines charged to businesses will start at $50 “per incident,” Reilly said.
He added, “The problems that we seem to have is with the big out of town corporations, it seems to be a cost of doing business and they just don’t seem to care.”
The city is “really noticing an uptick,” spurring the new system, he continued.
Abandoned cart [Image from Eureka City Staff reports at the council meeting]
Councilmember Renee Contreras-DeLoach’s question about the legality of charging businesses for things that have been stolen from them led to a discussion with City Attorney Robert Black that surprised her.
Black said when stolen cars are located and towed to an impound site, their owners are charged a fee for the impoundment.
“Is that true? You get charged the impound costs and everything for your car if your car is stolen?” Contreras-DeLoach rejoined, describing it as “eye-popping” and saying “we’re uncovering a little pile of worms here.”
But Black differentiated between stolen cars, where “it’s usually a private party involved in towing and storing your vehicle and so they have to be compensated in some way” and stolen shopping carts.
“I think the issue with shopping carts is the businesses are not taking sufficient responsibility,” he said.
He noted that businesses can have carts with locking wheels but “they don’t sufficiently enforce that.”
There was some discussion about not wanting charge fees to local businesses but Development Services Director Kristin Kenyon said the abandoned carts issue doesn’t have a wide scope.
“We just have some some bad actors with businesses that really don’t care about their property getting stolen,” she said.
There was also some questioning on whether the ordinance includes penalties for those doing the thefts.
“If you steal anything, it can be a misdemeanor,” said City Manager Miles Slattery.
The council voted 3 to 1, with Councilmember Kati Moulton absent, to introduce the ordinance amendment. It’ll soon come back for final approval.
Councilmember Mario Fernandez cast the dissent vote, saying that charging businesses that have had carts stolen from them is “not easy to rectify in my mind.”
Also at the meeting, the council approved a 9.46% Humboldt Recology trash and recycling pick-up fee increase effective July 1 and a 94-cent green waste increase.
That’s more than twice last year’s increase of 4.29%. The cost hike is largely due to increases in the costs of solid waste disposal and workers’ pay.
Slattery said the per-hour pay for Recology truck drivers was “shockingly low” at $20 and has been raised by several dollars.
Another recent factor influencing rates is the market for recyclables, which has “crashed,” Slattery said, leading to a per-ton cost instead of revenue.
Next year’s rate will be affected by a new cost – that of a state-mandated organic waste pick-up program.
Slattery said cost-cutting efficiency measures are being considered, including discontinuation of alleyway pick-ups.
Join the discussion! For rules visit: https://kymkemp.com/commenting-rules
Comments system how-to: https://wpdiscuz.com/community/postid/10599/
First thing needed is the arrest of anyone off the property of a business pushing a cart ,is this not grand theft. Why would the county or city workers who pick them up not just return them to the business. It’s not like they don’t know where it belongs. I am sick of good folks having to pay for others bad behavior. This is not the stores fault, it is caused by not arresting them for years now. Lets stop the madness. Any one walking through a homeless camp would not believe we let this happen in America.. Boot camp and rehabs to teach these folks how to live in a normal society. Stop supporting Drug dealers and users.
If only it were that simple!
You and I might think anyone wheeling a cart away from the store is either stealing the cart or at least in possession of stolen property — but according to Section 22435 of the State of California B&PC you and I would be wrong!
It’s a tribute to the lobbying power of the California Grocers Association that B&PC Section 22435 et sec is needlessly complex, extremely convoluted, impractical, unworkable and almost uniformly ignored.
See my reply to I like stars for more details.
And be sure to thank the state legislature for failing to adopt regulations that are clear cut and effective!
Charging businesses $50 for bum-stolen carts… when Eureka is awash in
Sales Tax/Old Biden/Newsomite (FIAT) monies.
Paint ’em green.
Put orange plastic cones on ’em.
Bicycle warning signs on ’em.
At that point… the City Council will find a way to retrieve them !!!
—
Go figure.
this is very typical of a FAILed government. Unwilling to have the EPD enforce theft laws, they are going after the victim. Making the victim pay for the crime the Failed city council will not enforce.
.
Your vote counts. Be smart, dont vote for progressive social justice warriors. Vote for fiscal conservatives.
.
If you see a cart out of the parking lot report it immediately. 911.
The city of eureka will do anything to steal money from the business owners of their town.
Instead of imposing fines, why don’t you hire a third party company to gather the carts and return them to the supermarkets like they do in Mendocino and lake county? I’m sure you can utilize taxpayer dollars too pay this person $30 an hour for this job. It’s not even that big of a deal, they could be doing it part-time even.
You guys utilize stolen tax dollars for all sorts of shit that the general public doesn’t want you to do, why don’t you utilize it for something that we need for once?
Why is everything always a fucking money grab in Humboldt count? I swear to God all they want to do is steal money from the people who pay taxes that fund their check every fucking week.
These corporations pay far less than their fair share in taxes. They should be in charge of their own property
So what is fair and who is required to pay it? Repeating something without understanding it is useless. The US tax code is a hot mess because Congress just loves using taxes as power.
“Is corporation tax more than income tax?
This depends on the individual business owner’s total taxable income. The corporate tax rate is a flat 21%, while personal income tax rates vary from 10% to 37%, depending on the person’s taxable income. But this comparison is oversimplified because there are other factors involved. For example, owners of corporations also have to pay taxes on dividends they receive, and owners of other types of small businesses must pay self-employment taxes on their company’s income.”
You’ll hear some complaining about double taxation. A corporation can not deduct the dividends they pay out so the corporation pays taxes then the individuals who gets the dividends pays taxes too. “Owners of corporations are subject to double taxation on corporate income, meaning that they pay taxes twice on the same dollar of income. The corporation pays one tax on the corporate level and the individual owner(s) pays a second tax at the individual tax level on dividends distributed to the owner(s). If the corporation doesn’t pay dividends and reinvests or holds onto its after-tax earnings, the value of its stock will go up, and that leads to capital gains.”
But you know who doesn’t pay capital gains? Pension funds. If they had to pay them, it would generate billions in taxes as these institutional investors own 2/3rds of the stock market. So lots of people, especially public employees, are the bottom line owners of corporate profits.
https://smartasset.com/taxes/corporate-tax-rate-per-state
https://manhattan.institute/article/who-owns-the-stock-market-its-not-just-the-wealthy
All of that is true, thank you. Corporations also hire employees who then pay taxes of all kinds. If you think Corporations are evil, try doing without them.
U.S. businesses pay 93% of all Federal Taxes collected.
If a homeless person steals a generator from your garage, and it’s found in their camp, should you be fined?
“If you steal anything, it can be a misdemeanor,” said City Manager Miles Slattery.
It is a misdemeanor to steal something, you idiot.
It’s only a misdemeanor if the DA prosecutes. I would love to know how often that happens. My guess is never or very close to never.
Probably never — State B&PC Section 22435 et sec says it’s only a misdemeanor if the shopping cart has a “permanently affixed” sign that identifies the cart owner; the procedure for authorized removal of the cart from the premises; that the unauthorized removal is unlawful; and a valid telephone number or address for returning the cart.
To secure a conviction it’s also necessary to prove the cart was removed with “the intent to temporarily or permanently deprive the owner of possession of the cart.”
Few if any carts have the required signage — but if any do it’s a simple matter for the bums to remove the signage which also removes the criteria for prosecution.
There are other provisions in the code that in theory allow for prosecution but they’re equally unworkable.
Likewise, provisions in the code that allow cities or county’s to impound the carts and impose fees or fines are equally unworkable as the ECC seems destined to find out.
The only workable alternative to carts littering the streets that doesn’t cost taxpayers money would be for the stores to utilize wheel lock technology or contract with a cart retrieval service.
Carts that lack the required signage may be deemed abandoned and recycled as scrap metal as the city has been doing.
The other alternative is for the city or county to provide free cart retrieval service.
But why should the taxpayers be stuck with the bill if the owners of the carts don’t care enough to apply the required signage or make any effort to keep their carts on their premises?
My neighbor built an entire house out I shopping carts he has stolen over the years.Held together by zip ties. The police just drive by and do nothing. His house is 1400 square feet with 2 bedrooms. It is a little drafty in winter…but it’s free!
pics?
”Slattery said the per-hour pay for Recology truck drivers was “shockingly low” at $20 and has been raised by several dollars.”
Miles the liar.
Recology Inc
Fortuna, CA
Transportation and Material Moving Occupations
Regular | $26.67-$31.38 Hour
I can’t think of any of them that make $20/hr. Maybe 10 years ago. They start at $26 locally, according to their website.
Also at the meeting, the council approved a 9.46% Humboldt Recology trash and recycling pick-up fee increase
I got a recology bill last month for July, august, and September. The increase was on it already with a note. How did they know it would pass?
Particularly for something that bills three months in advance for something you’ve yet to use. They’re getting paid more ahead of time.
Umm…dey is geniuses?! Dey council members sure is smart! Dey take our money and do whatever dey want…so hoo is stoopid? Huh?
Unbelievable. Businesses being charged for getting robbed. Realize any shopping cart not on the premises of the business owning it is stolen. Why are the thieves not held accountable. Why is the victim held accountable. Some businesses have discontinued shopping carts due to the theft problem.
Just remove the wheels.
Shame on every one of our City Council thieves! You all should be forced out! Enough already of stealing from the ones who pay your wages! Get off your high horses and take care of your constituents! Recology is just as crooked! They first blame rate increase on people not throwing away enough trash to keep them afloat, maybe people are just staking their trash or burning it because no one can afford their rates! Wake up Humboldt, you’re sinking fast! Time to re-structure with people with real problem solving skills not “increase the taxes” mantra!
chill. This will affect wal mart and target and winco more than like… Murphys or grocery outlet or the co op. This isnt gonna affect a mom and pop shop that don’t even have shopping carts to steal
But you hear “more taxes” that you aren’t even be paying, and you still wanna throw a fit, because God forbid these giant corporations actually put back into the town that gives them their business
Target carts have wheel locks. They won’t roll outside the parking lot.
And, they employ local people. Actually putting back into the area…People who pay your beloved taxes and spend money locally.
Yeah- the solid waste business is a classic business for criminal corruption. Ask Tony Soprano. But all over the country. Humboldt is no different…
You know whose carts you don’t see? Grocery Outlet and Eureka Natural Foods. Because they have cart locks THAT WORK. Winco put in the wires a couple years back and they lasted for fifteen minutes which is why their carts are rolled down Broadway and into incampments. One would think corporations would have a financial interest in not replacing carts but I suppose it’s all good if the paying customers cover the cost?
Lol yes, they do work. At least I can remember dragging my cart, wheels locked, the last couple of feet to my truck parked at the edge of the ENF parking lot.
Why do they not put wheet locks on them? It would great if the author had asked Winco about it. I would like to know what they say.
The author was way too busy double spacing between every sentence of the story to be bothered with investigating.
Some of those folks carry tool bags around to ply their wares and swap out the wheels. Or should I say pry YOUR wares? More than once, I’ve seen a person behind the mall or Del Norte stripping the locking wheels off a cart and replacing them with non-locking ones. They may be addicts, but some of them are damned industrious and creative.
I have been told that a shopping cart is worth $300-500. One would think they would want them back.
Yes, of course, blame the business owners for people stealing their shopping carts. I can’t see any reasonable way to stop people from stealing the carts. Are they going to require the business owners to put electronic locks on the wheels which are triggered by a wire in the ground all the way around the business. I hate to say it, but I think most of the carts that have rolled off are being pushed by a homeless person. I don’t think the business should be forced to pay for someone else’s bad behavior. We have a lot of city trucks driving around usually with two people in the cab and what for. Remove the passenger and let the driver stop and collect any stolen carts and say charge a $10.00 fee for each cart returned to the business. But that leads to another problem. If the cart is not marked with a business name what now? This is ending being a REAL BIG PROBLEM!
Register all shipping carts with DMV. DMV will fix the problem!
Farce, I think that would require each cart to have a license and a serial number that is stamped in heavily to show ownership. DMV is on overload with people wanting this and that. I really don’t think they would be interested unless it brought in a tidy sum of money from each cart. I wonder if a magnetic device placed inside the cart tubing during construction would help. The device could have the store name and phone number, and each device would need different information for each store. The police could have a small reader that showed who owned the cart and phone number.
The amount we are charged to get rid of trash is insane! In Mckinleyville the cost to take a load to the dump is well over $250 a ton. In Eureka the cost is $208.48 a ton. Is it any wonder that we see trash all over the place? Take a trip out to the Arcata bottoms in June after students leave for the summer. You will see old mattresses along with a verity of trash left by the out going Cal Poly students. with these crazy increases it is only getting worse.
I get it that the fine seems displaced, but face it, you can’t get blood out of a turnip and there’s no money for bootcamps or any other homeless rehab scheme you can think of. As much as it seems unfair, a friend once said,” the fair is in August.” The only workable solution is wheel locks for the carts.
Businesses could eliminate carts. Then the overfed folks wouldn’t be able to over shop and their screaming brats could run rampant through the store, thus causing the well-fed shopper to exercise chasing them down. Get rid of the carts, businesses. Help JFK Jr. Make America Healthy again.
Cutting SNAP, WIC and EBT will cut down on the items alot of folks use a cart for, too.
Some local businesses have made it where you can’t remove the shopping carts from the store. So now you have to lug the bags from inside the store to your car, instead of being able to unload from the the cart. That can be burdensome to the handicapped and elderly.
And as far as being shocked about having to pay for impound fers when your car is stolen, if a car is abandoned on the road and is finally towed as a nuisance, the tow company is stuck with the cost of towing, storage, and disposal. Sometimes they manage to recover some of the cost, but not all.
And this is even after the state government collects a yearly fee for vehicle abatement when registering your vehicles. The tow company is suppose to be able to recover the cost thru courts when the registered owner is cited for abandoning the veh, but the courts and government fail to follow their own abatement programs and the tow companies are left to do what they can.
This shows how out of touch our gpvernment is with programs they force on the people they are suppose to represent and serve. They have no problems implementing programs that cost the citizens and businesses that increase the city coffers, while driving up costs of living and doing business in the city.
The city council members need to get a grip on reality and start making policies that work on creating relief for businesses and the tax payer. Instead they create safe havens for the criminals, drug addicts, and the homeless that do not want to accept the responsibility of their own actions.
Instead of making the people that steal the carts and abandon them all over the city responsible for the problem, they blame the victims and the tax payer will again pay the price.
Non-enforcement is a problem. Legislatures are good at passing laws but thereafter wash their hands of the problems. There needs to be a mechanism by which any law not enforce sunsets automatically.
Those damn rats are ruining everything. I bet businesses will quit offering shopping carts.
Then little old ladies will be mugged for these
They already are. I’ve seen more than a few of these tied behind the seat of a bicycle full of junk.
I sure hope they don’t stop offering carts Charlie. Many of the shoppers are older and just can’t carry all their purchased items by hand. I have noticed at Costco and Winco kind employees or younger people helping the old folks get their stuff into their car. A very kind jester on both parts.
I lived in Holland many years ago – to use a shopping cart there you had to purchase a token ( like a quarter cost at the time) -the token released the shopping cart for your use, and when the shopping cart was parked back into its structure, the token was released back to you to use next time- perhaps something like that might help
But that’s what they do in Europe!
(Yes, I know we could significantly improve a lot of things by emulating some of what they do over there. But, for some reason, simply saying, “That’s what the do in Europe” is enough to derail many a very reasonable idea. Metric system, anyone?)
Frequently derailed because it is not “what they do in Europe” in the first place or at least not relevant to the problem in the US. There’s way too much oikophobic drooling over the magic word “Europe” among some liberals.
“studies have shown that cart rental systems like Aldi’s aren’t an effective deterrent when it comes to people who just want to wander off with a cart. Apparently, people are willing to pay a quarter for a cart they can keep — even if it’s not exactly legal.”
As for why Europeans are forced to do this? “And this money-saver is simple.
When people return their own carts, Aldi doesn’t need to pay someone to spend hours each day going around the parking lot collecting the stray carts you see at almost every other grocery store.”
Wow! A twofer irrelevancy- eliminate employees and doesn’t work anyway.
https://www.mashed.com/143493/the-real-reason-aldi-makes-customers-pay-for-shopping-carts/
F U ECC and everyone who came up with this BS. You, ECC, EPD, DA Office, Judges and everyone else who wants to charge the victims instead of the criminals are a disgrace. You refuse to take thugs, tweakers, transients and others who are the problem here off the streets. Please show me at least a shred of evidence you care about anything but a free paycheck for refusing to do your jobs. Your pathetic success levels are worse than the worst weather reporters forecasts.
It’s time to do your jobs for a change.
Oh- I thought their job was taking OUR money through taxes and spending it on whatever they thought was a good idea. While sitting around on their fat asses.While collecting overpaid salaries, vacation pay, pensions, etc all from OUR money…
So if I own a business in Eureka and a thief steals a cart and wheels it around town with impunity while police ignore them, then when the thief is done with and the city returns it I get charged? There are some “Bad actors” here. But it’s not the business owners. I’m old enough to remember when the thief was punished instead of the victim. Why not intact an ordinance which fines the thief for having the cart and use that money to pay recovery costs?
Yet DHHS hands out thousands of syringes every month knowing full well few if any will be returned while the vast majority are discarded around the community endangering the health and safety of all. How about holding the “Bad actors” at DHHS and Humboldt County board of supervisors accountable?
Brilliant!
Next Eureka will make shopping carts illegal. That will solve the problem.😂
The problem here is that for years now they have taken taxes and not used it for the purposes it was collected kicking the cans down the road attempting to fund unfunded projects with monies that were supposed to go towards maintenance and the like . Well the piper is demanding to be paid and the shady balancing math is no longer working instead of making course corrections they have redoubled their spending on non critical projects knowing that at some point voters will have no other option then to refund those critical projects again and because they will not get arrested or any real meaningful punishment for their misuse of taxpayer funds they will keep doing it over and over again . This is what having a government that is above the law looks like , this is what a government that lives on a different level then those they govern looks like
Just saw a costco cart being pushed by a homeless bro in arcata. They take those things far from the businesses. Its insane.
Arrest the homeless.
Obviously we need more monitoring, technology and accountability to solve this very serious problem!!! Each shopping cart needs to have it’s own GPS tracker and unique registration. Shoppers can rent them from a locked kiosk by using their credit/debit card. For those who don’t have these they can register to have their thumbprints stored in an identification system in the cloud so they will be able to unlock a cart with their own unique thumbprint. This will pair every single unlocked cart with an individual unique shopper!! Then if the shopping cart is not deposited back into the kiosk we will have both it’s location ( by GPS) and the identity of the failed shopper. The sheriff and his SWAT team can then apprehend this offender and make THEM pay for the shopping cart’s retrieval!! Simple! Accountability- Responsibility-Everybody Happy!! And think of all the jobs that can be produced….
Jobs for more, maybe, but what about Bubbles?
Digital law enforcement rots for the Bubbleses of the world.
Yet the violent criminals, even if apprehended, are back at it in no time.
I think we need to ask Elon Musk. He will have the answers we need! This shopping cart quandary must be solved!!!
Hello, Laura.
Yaasss…good old Eureka. Encourage and support practices which discourage business, then fine the owners of empty buildings. Then fine the remaining businesses for “allowing” their carts to be stolen by the same homeless/mentally ill/drug addicts the City condones and supports through their policies. Yaasss, yaasss, next we can fine businesses and homeowners when goods that were stolen from them are found in homeless camps. Yaasss, yaasss, it’s a recccipe for successss.