City crews must handle more pressing matters first
Abandoned shopping carts can find themselves without a buyer
– and that can lead to increasing numbers of them on the streets
of Hollister.
City crews must handle more pressing matters first
Abandoned shopping carts can find themselves without a buyer – and that can lead to increasing numbers of them on the streets of Hollister.
More and more of the abandoned carts have shown up around town. The city used to have a program in which its code enforcement division documented the location of missing carts, notified stores in writing where the carts were, and gave those stores a few days to retrieve the carts before billing them for retrieval and storage. But as of late 2007, the city’s efforts have been cut back significantly due to staffing shortages. For stores, the cost often outweighed the effort, so they began merely paying the fines and leaving the work to the city.
Though the city does handle some cases – about four last year, said division intern Penny Lee – other, more life-threatening issues must take precedent. With the carts, it’s often caused by homeless residents or apartment dwellers who don’t take them back.
“We contact the stores, and the crummy thing is then the store gets fined for somebody else taking the cart,” Lee said.
Know of an area that needs attention? Call the Weekend Pinnacle at 637-6300 or send an e-mail to
le*****@pi**********.com
.
