City leaders in Lakewood gave final passage to a measure this week that cracks down on abandoned shopping carts left strewn around the city, often at bus stops or on sidewalks.
The ordinance, which passed Monday night, puts the burden on grocery stores and other large retailers in Lakewood to track down and round up the carts once they are taken off property and abandoned.
The city will likely start out running the retrieval program itself, though businesses will be given the option to contract with a cart retrieval service to do the job without direct city involvement. Lakewood city staff rounds up an average of 20 abandoned shopping carts a month, and officials say the carts contribute to unwanted “blight” in Colorado’s fifth-largest city.
Lakewood’s measure comes less than half a year after Lone Tree passed its own abandoned-cart measure earlier this year.