Urban eyesores

They've been labeled three-dimensional graffiti and signs of urban decay.

Most people refer to them as shopping carts, and they are littering neighborhoods across Sonoma County.

On one block of Petaluma Hill Road in southeast Santa Rosa this week, almost two dozen shopping carts sat abandoned on the side of the road. They'd been there for days, untouched, as motorists buzzed past on the busy road and people walked to and from nearby housing developments.

"That's outrageous," Santa Rosa Mayor Bob Blanchard said Friday after driving past the cart graveyard. "I counted 21. I thought, 'Holy mackerel, that's out of line.' That needs to be reeled in."

The reality is that shopping cart abandonment is a festering problem that seems to be getting worse in many places. Yet few communities are willing to tackle it.

That's been disheartening for people like Annette Rowland, who moved into the Kawana Springs neighborhood about three months ago.

Rowland, a financial counselor for Sutter Family Practice, said she and her husband were drawn to the area of newer single-family homes and apartment complexes because it seemed family friendly and well cared for.

Then she noticed people pushing shopping carts on the streets and in some cases leaving them behind.

"It's just going to get worse and worse, until it gets so bad they have to do something about it," she said.

In Sonoma County, only Rohnert Park has an ordinance that requires businesses to retrieve shopping carts after three days or risk getting slapped with fines.

Statewide, 66 cities have similar legislation.

Blanchard, however, said he is hesitant to pursue a similar law in Santa Rosa.

"I'm a little reluctant to have an ordinance on absolutely every part of human behavior. That's pretty restrictive and onerous," he said.

Instead, he said the city will consider contacting businesses to ask that they clean up the mess.

"The various stores need to have people out there every night cleaning it up -- and every day. That's something we need to work on," he said.

Asking businesses to voluntarily take care of the problem has had mixed results.

Lola's Market on Petaluma Hill Road hired a person to retrieve carts after the job grew too big for store employees, said manager Adolfo Ortega.

He said carts are picked up twice a week or whenever people complain, although several of Lola's green carts littered the neighborhoods near the store this week -- as well as in Roseland neighborhoods near Lola's Dutton Avenue market.

Ortega said carts from the Dutton Avenue Lola's have been found across Highway 101 on Steele Lane and on Mendocino Avenue, a distance of more than three miles.

"They're all over the place," Ortega said.

Ortega, whose family owns the stores, presented the issue as one of economics. Each cart costs about $150. Losing them can affect the bottom line. He said that as long as the store gets the carts back, he has no problem allowing customers to take them out of the parking lot.

"They don't make that much money," he said of Lola's customers, who overwhelmingly are Latino. "Some don't have cars. That's their means of transportation, to walk through the store and take everything back in the cart."

Lola's is not alone. On Petaluma Hill Road, red carts from Target, as well as those from Trader Joe's and Costco, contribute to the blight.

These stores are located in the Marketplace on Santa Rosa Avenue, a considerable distance away in some cases from where the carts eventually end up.

Rob Leiss, general manager of the Santa Rosa Costco, said he's found carts from the store as far south as Friedman's Home Improvement, almost three miles away. Often there are as many as 20 carts there from a variety of stores, he said.

He said Costco employees do a good job of retrieving carts based upon monthly inventories that usually show only a few carts missing.

"We try to be good neighbors," he said. "We do our part to go out there and collect them as quickly as we can."

A Target spokeswoman did not return a call for comment.

At Trader Joe's, manager Ron Anderson said he and his employees canvass the neighborhood about once a month for carts. He estimated he's lost about 100 carts in four years.

"It isn't that bad really, with regards to loss on carts," he said. "A lot of other stores have more severe problems than we do here."

But what stores can live with, and what communities have to put up with, are often two different stories.

"How is it in Petaluma? It's out of control in areas that are close to the sources," said Frank Simpson, founder of Petaluma Involved Neighbors and an avowed expert on shopping carts.

He said retrieval services are only mildly effective because "what they pick up on Tuesday morning is back out on the streets Tuesday afternoon."

He said the only sure-fire way to curtail cart dumping is to not allow people to take carts out of the parking lot.

Some stores have done just that using technologies that automatically lock the wheels on carts whenever they are taken beyond an invisible radar shield.

One such product from Carlsbad-based Carttronics LLC is installed in half of the 12 Safeway stores in Sonoma County.

In Sacramento, the technology and a 2002 ordinance that requires merchants with 50 or more carts to submit an "abandoned cart prevention plan" has had a major effect on reducing problems with abandoned carts, according to city officials.

At a cost between $9,000 and $20,000 to install, however, smaller retailers struggle to justify the expense. That includes Lola's, which decided that it couldn't afford it, Ortega said.

Not lost in all this is the role that the community plays in preventing shopping cart blight.

Despite what is an obvious eyesore on Petaluma Hill Road, the city has not had any complaints about the problem, according to Mike Reynolds, the city's code enforcement officer.

It's as if people in some neighborhoods have come to accept cart dumping as a fact of life.

"They say, 'Oh, this is Kawana Springs. It's not the best place to live,' " Rowland said as she sat on her front porch. "But look around. These are nice homes. Everyone takes care of their yards. There's a lot of kids.

"There's not much you can do," she continued. "You could be a good citizen and take the carts back, but they'll just end up on the street again."

You can reach Staff Writer Derek J. Moore at 521-5336 or derek.moore@pressdemocrat.com.