Report
to/Rapport au :
Transportation
Committee
and Council / et au Conseil
Submitted by/Soumis par : M. Rick O’Connor,
City Clerk and Solicitor/Greffier et Chef du contentieux
Contact Person / Personne ressource :
Kevin Wylie,
Manager, Roads and Traffic Operations & Maintenance,
Public Works
Department,
(613) 580-2424,
ext. 19013, Kevin.Wylie@ottawa.ca, and
Valérie Bietlot, Legal Counsel, City Clerk and Solicitor Department,
(613) 580-2424,
ext. 21384, Valerie.Bietlot@ottawa.ca
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SUBJECT: |
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OBJET : |
LES CHARIOTS DES CENTRES COMMERCIAUX
ABANDONNÉS SUR LES TERRAINS DE LA VILLE - OPTIONS |
That
Transportation Committee receive this report for information.
Que le Comité des transports prenne connaissance de ce rapport.
Background
On December
7th, 2011, Transportation Committee directed staff to examine the
costs and benefits of the establishment of a program to retrieve abandoned
shopping carts from City property. This direction included the proposal of
bringing the carts to a City yard for storage until such time as the store
owner claims and picks up the carts, as well as the establishment of a fee for
the release of the carts to help offset the costs of the program. A copy of that motion is set out in Document
1 to this report.
The Municipal Act, 2001 (the “Act”) provides the discretionary
authority for municipalities to enact by-laws to regulate abandoned shopping
carts on municipal property or municipal highways. In accordance with Subsection 10(2) of the Act, the City may enact by-laws
regarding the protection of persons or property, as well as for the
environmental well-being of the City. In addition, Subsection 63(1)
of the statute permits the City to impound objects left on a highway contrary
to a by-law that prohibits the placing, stopping, standing or parking of an
object on such highway. Under this provision, the object that has been
impounded can be sold by the City if unclaimed after 60 days. The Act
also allows the City to charge fees for services provided by it, or on
behalf of it, including use of its property.
Finally, Section 128 of the Municipal
Act, 2001 allows the City to prohibit and regulate in respect of matters
that, “in the opinion of Council, are or could become or cause public
nuisances.”
With respect to the City of Ottawa’s
responsibilities as a road authority, the City has a statutory obligation under
Section 44 of the Municipal Act, 2001
to ensure that its highways are in a reasonable state of repair in the
circumstances.
City staff
has researched the various approaches taken by Ontario municipalities to
address abandoned shopping carts on municipal property including highways. These approaches range from simply addressing
the issue through signage on site by local retailers to community-based efforts
to track abandoned carts and education programs with retailers to entering into
legal agreements with retailers or third parties to retrieve the carts and
return them to the businesses (i.e. non-regulatory approaches), to enacting
by-laws to prohibit and regulate the removal of shopping carts from the
business’s property (i.e. regulatory approaches).
Most of the
options appear to include charging a fee (e.g. a retrieval and/or storage fee)
to offset municipal costs of retrieving, storing and administering the return
of the carts to their retail owners. Of
the municipalities surveyed, the fees ranged from $2.00 to $6.00 (per-cart for
daily storage only) to $50 (one-time retrieval fee to be paid by owner).
DISCUSSION
In keeping with the legislation noted
above, the City has a legal responsibility to ensure the City’s roads are
reasonably safe of obstacles. To meet
this obligation, Public Works staff removes shopping carts from the City’s
rights of way and sidewalks in order to ensure the safe passage of motorists
and pedestrians. That said, Public Works does not have a formal program in place to
return abandoned shopping carts. The
current practice involves staff returning an abandoned shopping cart as a
courtesy at no charge if the cart is marked and it is readily apparent from
which location it originated. If the
abandoned cart is unidentified, it is taken to the closest Public Works yard and
stored.
As the City returns all identifiable
carts, retail outlets are not notified when carts are retrieved. On occasion, a contractor or agent of certain
retailers has come to the various works yards to retrieve carts with
authorization from the various retailers, but this is not a regular
occurrence. Therefore, if carts are not
claimed by the owner within a few months they are recycled. In addition, carts that are damaged are also
recycled.
The Public Works Department typically collects approximately 1,000
carts per year in the downtown area and another 450 carts per year from the
east, west and south areas of the City.
The costs associated with this ad hoc activity are currently not
tracked. Any future program to more systematically address the issue of
abandoned carts from City property, as well as the return of the carts to their
owners, would require internal resources for retrieval and storage of the carts
as well as costs associated with administering the return of the carts to the
owners. Subject
to further direction from Council, the Public Works Department will continue
the current method of shopping cart retrieval so as to ensure the safe passage
of vehicles and pedestrians on roadways.
It should be noted that, to date,
staff has advised that abandoned carts in parks and recreational properties of
the City do not appear to be a problem.
Below is an overview of the approaches
taken by other municipalities to address the issue of abandoned shopping carts.
A. Non-Regulatory
Options
The various non-regulatory measures undertaken
by other Ontario municipalities appear to be reasonably effective in addressing
abandoned carts on municipal properties.
The most “hands-off” approach from a
municipal perspective appears to be the one initiated by a community-based
organization in the City of Thunder Bay.
The “Litter-Free Thunder Bay”, essentially a group of volunteers, has
established a website through which members of the public may report the
location of abandoned carts throughout the municipality. Retailers also have access to this website in
order to track the carts and to coordinate their pick-up. In addition, members of the public are
encouraged to contact the store directly if a cart is not promptly retrieved by
the retailer. The website can be found
at the following address: http://www.litterfree.ca/.
The City of Greater Sudbury has a monitoring program that consists of
having the public or City staff report locations of abandoned carts and the
City contacts either the store owners or a cart retrieval company (private) for
retrieval. Greater Sudbury examined the
issue in November 2011. The staff report indicates that the municipality had
considered several options for regulating shopping carts, including enacting a
by-law. Local consultation on that option revealed that business owners
were reluctant to have a by-law enacted, being concerned that they would most
often be fined, rather than the individuals who actually take the carts off
their property. Further, an increase in
resources for both by-law and other City staff for enforcement of such
regulations and pick up of the carts would be required. As a result, the by-law option was not
approved, and a decision was made to continue the existing program with an
enhanced awareness campaign consisting of signage on carts and on the
properties advising patrons not to remove carts off the businesses’ properties,
together with municipal PSAs and website information.
The City of Toronto has a shopping cart retrieval program in place
that was created in cooperation with business retailers. The retrieval program
provides that abandoned carts will be picked up by Toronto staff and
stored in municipal yards. Participating retailers have formed an
association that is responsible for retrieving the carts from the City, and for
returning them to the rightful owners. The association also takes care of
storing the carts themselves while waiting for the rightful owner to pick them
up. The retailers, as a group, paid the City $50,000 per year
to cover the City’s costs of storage and for one staff person to coordinate the
retrieval. The retailers group have an
agent to represent them. Since the onset
of the new program, the City reported publicly that it saw a decrease in the
proliferation of carts on municipal property.
Staff recommended continuing with this retrieval program rather than
implementing a by-law/regulatory solution.
B. Regulatory Approaches
1.
Municipal By-laws
Three municipalities in Ontario have
enacted stand-alone by-laws to regulate abandoned shopping carts, namely the
Cities of Guelph and Mississauga, and the Town of Markham. These by-laws have some or all of the following
components:
a)
The creation of an obligation on business
owners to identify business name on cart;
b)
The establishment of an offence for business
owners to allow anyone to remove a shopping cart from their property;
c)
The establishment of an offence for any
person to remove a shopping cart from the premises of the business that owns or
uses the cart;
d)
The establishment of an offence for any
person to abandon a shopping cart on or near any highway or municipal property;
e)
A provision for municipal retrieval and
impounding/storage of carts found on or near any highway or municipal property;
f)
A provision for notice to be sent to the
owner to pick up the cart within a certain time frame and to pay a retrieval
fee which ranges from $25 to $50 (fee usually due and payable as of date
of impounding at City facility), and/or separate per-cart, per-day storage fee
($2 to $6) if the owner of the cart is identifiable; and
g)
If the cart is unclaimed for 60 days (time
frame varies), the municipality claims the cart as its property and sells it
for profit or otherwise disposes of it.
Other municipalities that regulate
abandoned shopping carts by by-law address the issues of abandonment, retrieval
and storage of the carts by way of incorporating appropriate provisions within
their existing by-law, such as traffic and parking, nuisance or use of
streets-related by-laws. A summary of all of these by-laws can be found at
Document No. 2 to this report.
Although no charges have been laid
under Mississauga’s Shopping Cart By-law, anecdotal evidence suggests that the
provisions allowing the City to remove abandoned carts from municipal property
and highways have proven to be useful.
Mississauga staff has worked with business owners of locations where
persistent problems exist to find alternative means of ensuring that carts are
not taken off the business property.
These efforts include the use of locking sensor devices on the property
line, hiring of contractors to assure retrieval, or barrier devices to prevent
carts outside the area of the business.
However, staff also found that relatively few companies have provided
their contact information or identification on carts and thus retrieval of the
stored carts by the companies does not frequently occur. As a result, most carts picked up by staff
remain unclaimed and recycled by the City after an appropriate time period has
passed.
In a similar
vein, staff from the City of Guelph has reported that no charges have been laid
under their by-law. However, most
shopping carts are identified and thus returned to their owners with relative
ease. Guelph staff usually returns the
carts to owners at regular intervals and charge a fee for the return. In Guelph however, the volume of abandoned
carts appears to be very low in comparison to Ottawa’s experience.
Finally, the
Town of Markham enacted its Shopping Cart By-law in 2008. Public reports at the
time indicated that staff collected hundreds of shopping carts every year,
which were then disposed of or recycled by the Town. Markham’s by-law requires that businesses
permanently identify their carts so that they can be returned to them by
municipal staff if picked up, and a retrieval fee of $52 is charged to the
business owner to allow the Town to recover its costs for the administration of
the by-law. The by-law further requires
that businesses implement and maintain “cart management strategies” to prevent
the removal of carts from their properties.
Although the by-law does not prescribe any particular strategy, a staff
report indicates that these measures could include the provision of signage on
site to prohibit removal of the carts and education for customers and employees
as well as cart control systems including coin deposit systems or magnetic
wheel lock mechanisms.
2. Enforcement
Issues
Enforcement of prohibitions of
removing carts from the business property potentially would be carried out by
enforcement staff of the By-law and Regulatory Services Branch. Given the nature of such prohibitions, staff
likely has to be on site to see an individual remove the cart from the property
in order to be able to charge the individual in question. Enforcement against a business that allows
its carts to be removed from its property would be dependent upon the cart
having the business name affixed to it.
Consultations that occurred in the Town of Markham and in the City of
Greater Sudbury on shopping cart regulations indicated that businesses were
reluctant to participate as they cannot readily control the behaviour of their
customers, particularly where there are no physical barriers in place in the
shopping area to prevent the removal of the carts from the retail parking
lot.
There
are no specific rural implications arising from the recommendation of this
report.
Staff
from the Public Works Department and the By-law and Regulatory Services Branch
were consulted.
Comments by
the Ward Councillor(s)
The Ward Councillor
has been kept apprised of this report by City staff.
LEGAL
IMPLICATIONS
There are no legal impediments to
implementing the recommendations of this report.
There are no risk management impediments to implementing the
recommendations of this report.
Abandoned carts on City property will continue to be removed by staff as
noted above.
There are no additional budget implications as a result
of the recommendations of this report. Public Works currently doesn’t track
cost related to abandoned shopping cards as noted in the report.
Should Council direct staff to pursue any of the
options other than the status quo within the report. Then Public Works would
have to advise Committee and Council on the implementation of such option in a
future report.
ACCESSIBILITY IMPACTS
N/A
Environmental Implications
N/A
Technology Implications
There are no immediate
technology implications associated with this report. However, Information
Technology Services (ITS) will work with Public Works and Legal Services to
identify the technology requirements, establish priorities and develop an
appropriate work plan in support of future initiatives.
TERM OF COUNCIL PRIORITIES
C1- Residents - “Contribute to the improvement of my
quality of life”
C3- Visitors – “provide a compelling, vibrant
destination”
The continued removal of abandoned carts from City property
to ensure safe passage for all users of the roadways, including sidewalks and
to reduce the nuisances created by carts on City property will contribute to an improvement in the quality of life of
residents and improve the experince of
visitors to the City.
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION
Document
1 – Motion from the December 7th, 2011 meeting of Transportation
Committee
Document
2 – Summary of Municipalities with
Shopping Cart By-laws
Staff
will undertake any further action and direction of Committee and Council.
DOCUMENT 1
COUNCILLORS’
ITEMS
ARTICLES DES
CONSEILLERS
Councillor / Conseiller
Tierney
ABANDONED SHOPPING CARTS ON CITY
PROPERTY - MOTION
LES CHARIOTS DES CENTRES COMMERCIAUX ABANDONNÉS SUR LES TERRAINS DE LA
VILLE - MOTION
City Wide / a l’échelle de la ville
WHEREAS
shopping carts from malls create a hazard and an eyesore when taken off store
property and left on City property; and
WHEREAS, there have been numerous reports to 3-1-1 and
Councillor’s offices in this regard resulting in the City spending countless
hours and resources returning shopping carts to their respective stores; and
WHEREAS the Municipality of Mississauga currently has an
existing Shopping Cart By-Law which the City of Ottawa could reference as a
template;
THEREFORE BE
IT RESOLVED that the
Transportation Committee direct staff to prepare a report for Q1 2012 to
examine the costs and benefits of the City establishing a program to retrieve store carts
from City property, including the option to bring them to the closest City yard
for storage until such time as the respective store owner claims and picks up
the carts, and establish a fee for the release of the carts to help offset the
costs of the program.
CARRIED
DOCUMENT
2
SUMMARY
OF MUNICIPALITIES WITH SHOPPING CART BY-LAWS
|
Municipality |
Specific
By-law |
Other
Solution |
Fee |
Explanation |
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No |
Yes |
$25.00 |
Section 82 of By-law 20M88, being the City’s by-law to control and regulate the use of streets: |
|
|
Yes |
|
Collection - $6 Storage - $25 |
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|
|
No |
Yes |
$50 |
Part 2 in Nuisance By-law : |
|
|
Yes |
|
$52 |
|
|
|
Yes |
|
$50 |
|
|
|
No |
Yes |
$30 to remove $2 daily to retain |
Section 620 in Street and Traffic By-law: Shopping
Cart on Highway 620. No person shall allow a shopping cart owned by that person or provided for use by that person in the operation of a retail business to be or remain on a Highway or in a public place, other than within a parking lot used or designated for use by the retail business to which that shopping cart relates. |
|
|
No |
Yes |
$50 |
Section in Traffic and Parking By-law: 36.2 (1) In this section, (a) “shopping cart” means any device used by customers to convey goods purchased from an owner; and (b) “owner’ means any person owning or
operating a business. (2) Every owner shall have the name of its business displayed on each
of its shopping carts for identification purposes. (3) No owner shall permit any person to remove shopping carts from its
property. (4) No person shall remove a shopping cart from an owner’s property. (5) No person shall abandon a shopping cart on any highway or private
property. (6) The city may remove any shopping cart found anywhere other than
the owner’s property and store it in a suitable place. (7) The owner of any shopping
cart removed and stored by the City may contact the City to arrange for the
return of the shopping cart upon payment of a fee of $50.00. (8) Any shopping cart removed by the City that has not been claimed by its owner within 30 days shall become the property of the City and may be disposed of in any manner the City deems appropriate. |