Orange County Focus is dedicated on Monday to analysis of community news, a look atwhat’s ahead and the voices of local people. : PERSPECTIVE : Merchants, Cities Clash Over Abandoned Carts

The cart comes before the blight.

Stray shopping carts on streets and sidewalks across Orange County not only are a hazard, they are a harbinger of urban decay, officials say. Their rapidly increasing numbers are a sign, like graffiti, of neighborhood deterioration. And for merchants, retrieving them is a growing expense.

“An abandoned shopping cart is saying that the people in that community don’t care,” Orange Police Chief John R. Robertson said. “It contributes to blight, which contributes to the amount of crime in an area.”

Though the public typically blames the homeless for the clutter, the carts also are used by working-class people who don’t have transportation to carry groceries and other purchases home, officials say.

Recognizing a growing problem, some cities have enacted or are considering ordinances that would force merchants to pay the city for picking up the stray carts. Last year, Placentia began charging merchants a $25 fee for each impounded cart. Stores that already have cart retrieval programs are exempt.

Costa Mesa threatened earlier this year to bill merchants a whopping $250 for each abandoned cart but backed off at the behest of the California Grocers Assn.

The powerful trade group, which represents 8,000 supermarkets, grocery and convenience stores, persuaded Costa Mesa and other cities to delay action and promised to become more aggressive in solving the problem. The association has steadily expanded its efforts to collect the carts, said Don Beaver, the group’s president. It now spends $7 million a month in the Los Angeles basin alone to retrieve 700,000 carts, he said.

The group has also experimented, though unsuccessfully so far, with various tactics to prevent carts from being removed from a merchant’s property. Electronic tracking devices on carts proved to be too expensive, and erecting barricades to keep the carts in the parking lot simply didn’t work.

With cities still clamoring for relief and threatening fines, the grocers organization is now promoting state legislation that would restrict how cities regulate the problem. Among other provisions, the bill would cap at $5 the amount that cities could charge merchants for each abandoned cart.

“Cities are all budget-strapped and are looking for a way to generate bucks,” Beaver said. “That’s the reason we had to push this legislation.”

The proposal, Assembly Bill 182, went to Gov. Pete Wilson last week. Aides said the governor is not expected to consider the proposal until this week at the earliest and would not say whether he is likely to sign it into law.

Some Orange County officials oppose the legislation, saying that it would not reduce cart abandonment and would only squelch local efforts to curb the problem.

As a resolution from the Orange City Council put it, the proposal is a “clear vote for special interest convenience at the expense of local control.”

Robertson, who wrote to the governor denouncing the bill, said: “In essence, local government will become spotters for supermarkets. . . . If the governor signs this, he will make the problem much worse.”

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In practical terms, the bill’s $5 retrieval fee simply isn’t enough to cover costs of impounding or to provide incentive to prevent carts from being wheeled off merchants’ premises, city officials said.

Said Costa Mesa council member Peter F. Buffa: “That’s not going to deter anybody, to be candid.”

City officials also say that the state proposal is too generous in the amount of time it would give merchants to retrieve stray carts. The bill would allow 24 hours; city officials insist on no more than 12 hours and would prefer as little time as four hours.

If the governor signs the bill, Costa Mesa officials say, they will reconsider a $250 fine for merchants who fail to monitor their carts. And in Orange, Robertson said, “we are going to get real creative in working around the state law to protect our community.”

Beaver of the grocers association insists that the legislation is reasonable. Charging merchants more than $5 a cart could bankrupt businesses, he said, and demanding that carts be retrieved in less than 24 hours is unrealistic.

If stiffer fines are enforced, he said, the consumer will end up paying them in the form of higher prices.

“For cities to crucify everyone over this is not right,” Beaver said.