ESCONDIDO -- With abandoned shopping carts visible along the city's main corridors most days, Escondido is now asking grocers and other vendors to keep the metal and plastic baskets to themselves.

A proposed city ordinance would require all grocery stores and other retailers with shopping carts to come up with ways to keep the carts from being taken out of their parking lot areas, or face fines of up to $1,000.

"It's a long-standing issue we have in this city," said Assistant City Attorney Jennifer McCain, who heads Escondido's appearance and compliance team. "We're at the point where we think we need to mandate some retrieval and containment policies."

In addition to contracting with companies that retrieve abandoned carts, something many grocers already do voluntarily, stores would have to enact policies to contain carts within the store's parking lot and submit the plans to the city for approval.

Those policies could range from having employees accompany shoppers to their vehicles, to installing physical or electric barriers that prevent the carts from leaving the premises.

"What we did is left the actual plan to the store," McCain said. "Some (stores) are large, and some are small, and there are financial matters associated with how they approach this."

Violators who don't submit plans or make necessary revisions to their proposals, or who allow their carts to be taken off the premises would face fines.

The City Council will consider the ordinance --- which is modeled after similar efforts in Buena Park and Long Beach -- when it meets at 4 p.m. on Wednesday. If approved, stores would have 90 days to submit their plans to the city for approval.

McCain said the ordinance is designed to get retailers to take a more active role in trying to prevent abandoned carts, not penalize them.

"The reality is some of these carts are going to get off the property," McCain said. "Just one cart found is not going to create a misdemeanor violation."

Many grocers already pay companies that retrieve their carts, which can cost upward of $130 each new. And they said the city shouldn't force them to spend more to prevent stray carts, or levy fines on them.

Peter Larkin, president of the California Grocers Association, said his members haven't had a chance to review the proposed ordinance and compare it with state law, which gives retailers a three-day window to claim carts impounded by the city free of charge.

But Larkin said he worries that the fine included in the ordinance unduly burdens grocers.

"We need to be responsible when it comes to our carts and the impacts (stray ones) have on the community," Larkin said. "But we want to make sure any local ordinances are in compliance with state law and allow responsible retailers the opportunities to get their carts off the street and back on their lots."

And many local markets said they already take additional measures they believe sufficiently reduce stray carts from littering Escondido's streets and sidewalks.

El Tigre Foods, for example, offers free van service that provides customers a ride home, said Tony Choi, assistant general manager.

But some customers prefer to walk, and any ordinance that would limit their ability to get their groceries homes would be bad for business, he said.

"It would hurt, because there are a lot of people who don't have cars that rely on taking groceries home with the carts, as they've always done," Choi said.

Not all stores have a problem with stray carts and shouldn't be forced to spend money fighting the problem, said Dick London, co-owner of Major Market, which has operated at its Centre City Parkway location for 16 years.

Major Market already contracts with a retrieval company. And London said that, because his store is located farther away from most homes and inside a dense shopping center, he loses few, if any shopping carts, each month.

"Stores that have a problem should have (to take) the responsibility to prevent carts from leaving," London said. "Some (stores) don't care, because those carts leave with $200 worth of groceries."

McCain said that if they can show that their programs sufficiently prevent carts from being taken off their premises, they would not be required to make any changes.

Two Escondido outlets -- Food 4 Less and the 99 Cent store on Valley Parkway -- already have electronic systems that lock the wheels of carts when they reach the perimeter of the parking lot.

The ordinance is part of a recent push by Escondido officials to clean up the city by tackling graffiti and other visual scourges. Earlier this year, the council set aside $1 million from last year's budget surplus to address the issues.

And while perhaps not as prevalent as graffiti, abandoned carts equally blight the landscape, city officials said.

"They're litter, basically, on the street," Councilwoman Marie Waldron said. "They decrease property values. And we all pay for it in the end, because the cost (to replace and retrieve the stolen carts) is added to our bill."

- Contact staff writer David Fried at (760) 740-5416 or dfried@nctimes.com.