PENDLETON — At the behest of the Pendleton Police Department, the city of Pendleton soon will have the ability to make supermarkets pay up for their abandoned shopping carts.

The Pendleton City Council unanimously voted Tuesday, July 6, to approve an ordinance that will require grocery stores and other retailers with shopping carts to post information on how to return them and enable the city to assess fines to cart owners who fail to retrieve their property.

Police Chief Chuck Byram said he requested the ordinance because his department was having trouble getting stores to reclaim their carts. He said police would report an abandoned cart and the store it belonged to would either ignore their report or wouldn’t respond to it until someone else found the cart and moved it elsewhere.

The new local law will require all stores with shopping carts to post signs on their properties reminding customers that taking a cart off the property without permission is theft. Similar signs with the identity of the owner and a return phone number are also required for each cart.

Should an officer or resident report an abandoned cart to the city, the owner has five days to pick it up or they risk a $50-$500 fine. If the city impounds the cart and it isn’t claimed within 30 days, the city can sell or dispose of the cart.

Byram said the police wouldn’t try to confiscate a cart that wasn’t reported as stolen or missing, and the intent of the ordinance was to target carts that weren’t actively in use.

“What we’re really concentrated on are the ones that are abandoned,” he said.

City attorney Nancy Kerns said she based the ordinance off of similar laws in other communities, and if the ordinance caused any consternation among the city’s retailers, they didn’t attend the public hearing to protest it.

The council took action on several other issues during the meeting.

• Pendleton is making a fourth attempt at securing a major infrastructure grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The council unanimously approved a $2 million match as a part of application for a $24.4 million grant through the federal government’s RAISE program. Also backed by a $2 million match from the Oregon Department of Transportation and $250,000 from Umatilla County, the grant would allow the city and state to begin a realignment project at Exit 209 interchange on Interstate 84.

Known as the BUILD grant during the Trump administration, the city has unsuccessfully applied for the grant three times.

• The council also unanimously approved a grant agreement between the city and the Oregon Department of Transportation to start planning for a bus barn at the Pendleton airport.

Carter said the facility would house Let ’er Bus Transit’s four buses and six minivans and could include a washing area. The grant is for $72,000, while the city is providing an $18,000 match from its transportation fund.

Finance Director Linda Carter said that once planning is complete, the city would seek additional grant funding to cover construction costs.