PENDLETON — A new ordinance regulating abandoned shopping carts goes into effect in Pendleton on Friday, July 30, but many retailers don’t anticipate much of a change in their operations.

Marjorie Bartlett, an assistant manager at Bi-Mart, said her store already retrieves its carts whenever they are found off the premises. Dan Canale estimates he’s only had to drive to pick up one of his carts five times in his seven-year tenure as a co-owner of Grocery Outlet. If a cart leaves the parking lot, he said he often finds it across the street near the Safeway recycling center.

On July 6, the Pendleton City Council approved a new local law that requires retailers with shopping carts to post return information in their stores and on their carts and retrieve abandoned carts in a timely basis or face potential fines. The goal of the new law is to put the onus of retrieving abandoned shopping carts on retailers instead of the city.

Like many of his peers at other stores, Ace Hardware manager Paul Turk said lost carts haven’t been much of a problem when most customers tend to leave their carts in the facility rather than take them out into the parking lot.

But he still had some concerns. He was unclear about who would report the lost carts to the store and how long staff would have to retrieve it after they are reported. He also didn’t know if the police would provide an escort to retrieve a cart if it was an unsafe location.

Pendleton Police Chief Chuck Byram said anyone can report a missing cart to a store, but the clock doesn’t start until after the police notify the store. Under the ordinance, cart owners are expected to retrieve their property within 12 hours, but the city won’t begin citing an owner until five calendar days pass.

Byram added that Pendleton police would be willing to work with stores on providing protection when retrieving carts and encouraged them to contact him with questions.

“My door is always open,” he said. “I answer my emails. My phone is always on.”

Byram said the impetus for the new ordinance was an uptick in calls about abandoned carts in 2019. While most of the calls came from a small group of individuals and “99%” of stores complied when asked to retrieve their property, Byram said police couldn’t ignore their reports, especially when a store was slow to react to an abandoned cart.

Byram said they try to handle each call about carts on a case-by-case basis, especially when someone still is using it. Byram said the police response is different when its a senior using the cart as their only means of transporting food or goods home.

Ultimately, Byram said he doesn’t anticipate invoking this ordinance often, but it provides the city “teeth” when it needs to get a store’s attention.

Turk said he worked at an Ace in Baker City prior to managing the Pendleton location and the Baker store would sometimes find a cart in a nearby river. Even if it’s not a problem now, Turk said he wants to preserve the Pendleton Ace’s carts, not only because they’re expensive to replace, but also because he considers shopping carts an important service for customers.