The Modesto City Council on Tuesday cleaned up a municipal law that prohibits people from stealing shopping carts, creating new requirements for businesses to retrieve their property.
It resulted from more than two years of work by Councilwoman Kristin Olsen to reshape the law by adding more resources for the city to collect abandoned carts.
It now requires stores to hire cart-retrieval services and creates a city hot line that residents can call to report abandoned carts. When the hot line will become operational isn't known.
"Abandoned shopping carts are nowhere near the most important challenge facing Modesto," Olsen said. "Nevertheless, removing them from the public right of way is one small step toward eliminating blight."
The revisions she and her colleagues passed reduces penalties for people who are caught taking carts away from a business.
That offense is punishable as a misdemeanor under the previous law. Councilwoman Janice Keating persuaded her colleagues to reduce that penalty to an infraction, which means people would not face jail time but would have to pay a less expensive fine.
"I don't know of anyone stealing grocery carts other than they need to get from Point A to Point B with their groceries," Keating said, contending that the carts are most often taken by people who don't own cars.
Bee staff writer Adam Ashton can be reached at aashton@modbee.com or 578-2366.
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