Councilwoman Minnie Diallo is tired of seeing errant shopping carts abandoned around town.

Earlier this week the first-term member of the Lathrop City Council opened up a discussion about the options that Lathrop has for ensuring that carts are not taken off of the property in which they are primarily used — options that ranged from mandating wheel locks for all stores to having staff invest the time into working with retailers to develop a plan that is sufficient for all involved parties.

Rather than impose a requirement that could cost retailers between $20,000 to $30,000 to outfit 200 shopping carts, the council agreed to let staff engage businesses to try and get voluntary cooperation.

“We’d like to see if we can get an agreement between the parties and get the retailers to take more responsibility for the carts,” City Manager Steve Salvatore said. “We’ll start with that and see how it develops and if it doesn’t work then we’ll look at something more restrictive.”

According to Diallo’s referral for the council docket, the shopping carts in question are often used by customers to walk their groceries home and are then left along sidewalks or in the city’s right of way — obstructing pedestrian traffic and serving as an unnecessary obstacle for those trying to get around them.

The city then has to expend taxpayer dollars to send a staff member out to retrieve and return them — even though the retailers have people that are supposed to be doing that job, Diallo said, it often doesn’t get done in a timely manner if at all.

While the city does have the option to mandate wheel locks, the decision made on Monday also gives them the chance to escalate the level of enforcement without going that far, instead of adopting an ordinance the city could adopt fees that will be levied if city staff were to have to go out and pick up the shopping carts and return them to their primary location.

During Monday’s meeting, Salvatore talked about how there is a local retailer in town that provides shopping carts and is against wheel locks because of a malfunction that led to the injury of a shopper and prompted a lawsuit.

If the city were to mandate them and wouldn’t be able to effectively enforce that mandate, he said, it would become a problem — especially if retailers decided outright that they weren’t going to comply.

“It would get to a point where we’re fining them and they aren’t paying attention and they don’t care because they aren’t going to do it. That’s their corporate policy, and it creates a situation where we’re powerless,” he said. “Some retailers may decide that ‘it’s a big issue for us and we aren’t going to do it and so therefore we’ll just go somewhere else.’”

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.