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When shopping carts are stolen from retail stores in the Village of Lansing, who should be held responsible?  Village officials have struggled with a cart dumping problem for years, where stolen carts are dumped in streams, wooded areas or ditches, mainly near the municipality's many apartment complexes.  In trying to gather information from citizens to inform an update to the Village's comprehensive plan, officials hope to get input from store managers and owners.

"We have a shopping cart problem and we're working on a shopping cart law," Trustee Julie Baker said at a meeting last week. "We want to get feedback from the business community about whether they are even interested in retrieving their shopping carts or whether they would be willing to indicate in their stores that taking shopping carts off the premises is forbidden."

A large part of the problem is that while the location of dumped carts strongly suggests they are being stolen primarily by apartment dwellers, it is next to impossible to catch them.  Village officials are considering scenarios for a cart law that could hold store owners responsible for retrieving the carts, or even apartment owners for enforcing some kind of law among their tenants.

Village officials will include questions about carts on a survey they plan to distribute to business owners to get an idea of how far Village businesses are willing to go to prevent the loss of the expensive carts.

"The main thing is are they willing to try to curtail (cart theft)," said Planning Board Chairman Mario Tomei.  "Or are they just writing them off -- the number of carts that they lose -- they may not even try to retrieve them."

Baker suggested a scenario for a new law in which Village employees would locate carts and give the originating stores a certain period of time to collect them.  If they miss that deadline the Village would pick them up and charge the stores for their return or take them to be recycled.

"It's an expense to the Village," she said.  "We've always been interested in solving the problem.  It's tricky because some people actually need carts to walk back and forth."


Village resident Jasmine Miller said that at one time she counted as many as Miller said that at one time she counted 20 carts across from Wakefield Apartments (located off of Graham Road behind the Cayuga Mall), which she calculated as a $10,000 loss to the stores they came from.  She said she used to walk carts back to the P&C when it was still open in the Cayuga Mall.

"We spoke to the manager," she told the Board of Trustees.  "He said those carts are $500 a piece.  And they do want them back.  They just don't know that they're out there."

Trustee Pat O'Rourke suggested that store owners could take the lead by charging a refundable fee for cart use in much the same way that airport carts are distributed from locking stands that release a baggage cart when you insert coins.

"In England they had this problem," noted O'Rourke, who is originally from London.  "They cured it by having people pay for the carts.  It was amazing how they stopped.  They put a pound coin in to be able to take it and people brought it back because they wanted that pound back.  It seems like a simple thing that stores could do."

Tomei said that if stores are willing to create a cart-loan policy and publicize that they allow customers to sign out a cart for a limited time, it might reduce theft.

"That's one way of making everybody aware that they're breaking the law by taking a cart and not bringing it back," Tomei said.  "If they had to put their name down on something they might feel obligated to return it, or they might say, 'This isn't worth it.  I'll walk up there and bring it back sooner.'"

Village Clerk Jodi Dake noted that Aldi's market does that in Ithaca.

Miller even suggested the Village buy 20 push carts and institute a program along the lines of Ithaca Car Share, in which people could sign up to borrow the carts as needed and return them to designated locations around the village.

Mayor Donald Hartill noted that there are electronic options similar to 'invisible fences' used to keep dogs from wandering their owners' properties that stores could implement.  He said he saw such a system in another state.

"One of the places that we've been recently had (something like) dog fences," Hartill said.  "You push the cart across that fence and the brake goes on.  You can't move it."


Baker noted that a business survey was last conducted in 1989.  Village Attorney David Dubow said that the conclusion from that survey was that landlord participation could positively impact the success of a cart law.  Or negatively.

"The locations of the greatest problems are correlated very closely to the landlords who chose not to try to solve the problem," Dubow said.  "I'm not sure which starts it and which ends it but the process is such that the landlords don't enforce it.  They just end up on the street."

Baker suggested other questions on a business survey might address adequate space for parking and others that might be culled from the previous survey.

The Board is still undecided on how to deliver the survey.  They seemed to agree that walking to the various stores to personally deliver it would yield the best results, and providing a return envelope would increase the likelihood of responses.

With no Village police force officials can't realistically hope to identify the people actually stealing and dumping the carts.  But holding businesses responsible for retrieving them or paying for their retrievable may or may not work.  The Trustees hope businesses will help guide them in crafting a law that ultimately eliminates a problem residents have been complaining about for many years.

"We have a cart problem," Baker says.  "The question is are the businesses interested in getting their carts back?  If we say 'we're going to hold your carts until you come get them, keep them hostage until you pay to get them out of jail', do they even care?"

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