Homewood's Roving Shopping Carts To Go On Lockdown This Summer

HOMEWOOD, IL — Did you get a little too used to scooting your Walmart shopping cart over to the Kohl's on Halsted so you didn't have to get in your car and find a parking spot twice? You might want to break that habit. Shopping carts at Walmart and stores around Homewood may be going on lockdown soon.

Village board members last month approved an ordinance that permits village officials to fine stores if they don't collect carts that have strayed far from the premises. So some stores, including Walmart, are looking at ways to keep their shopping carts closer to home.

Officials insist it's not to make your lives harder. It's to keep the streets safer and cleaner.

"People were complaining, but mostly we were trying to stay ahead of it," said Fire Chief Robert Grabowski.

He explained that wandering carts had become a bit of a problem in Homewood. Grabowski also oversees the building department, which issues citations for ordinance violations. Village crews, he said, had been finding the carts and returning them to stores.

They had been corralling 30 to 100 lost carts a month -- depending on the season -- and returning them to their home stores after representatives from those stores neglected warnings to retrieve them. The task became a burden on staff and budget, Grabowski said.

Now, Grabowski said, the village can ticket the stores without issuing a warning first. Tickets will cost offending stores $25 a cart.

Owners have taken notice, he said. By June, Walmart will have installed locking mechanisms on the wheels of its carts so that they'll freeze if anyone attempts to roll them beyond the store's perimeters. Other stores are following suit, he said.

Grabowski said he wasn't sure why people were taking so many carts from the stores. In some cases, people catching the Pace bus wheel their purchases to the stop and leave the carts there. Crews have seen as many as 15 crowded into a single stop, Grabowski said.

In other cases, it's people with good intentions who don't want to stop at their cars when they walk from Walmart to Kohls. And then there are kids who take them for joy rides.

"We've found them in driveways," Grabowski said.

The numbers of stray carts dropped down dramatically since ticketing began.

"Executives don't like coming to local court for these citations," he said.