ESCONDIDO -- In a muddy lot at the back of the city's public works yard on Spruce Street, a multicolored mass of about 150 shopping carts sat last week.

Left abandoned after aiding shoppers roll their groceries home, the carts had been collected by city workers in recent months from around Escondido. Practically every supermarket or other retail store in the city that offers the carts to customers was represented at the yard.

As city workers begin the process of returning the carts to their rightful owners and destroying the rejects in the coming weeks, city officials expect the shopping cart collection to shrink to just a handful -- and stay that way.

The city is moving toward the enforcement phase of an ordinance passed last year by the City Council, in an attempt to improve Escondido's appearance, that requires stores to keep shopping carts on their property, city officials said last week. Most stores seem to be complying with the ordinance, city officials say, but those that don't could face fines and even jail time for store officials.

At the city yard, green shopping carts from Ralphs supermarket and Dollar Tree, red carts from Staples, Circuit City and Office Depot, a few purple Party City carts, gray Wal-Mart carts, and brown ones from Vons supermarket all could be seen.

Some of the shopping carts looked like they had just rolled out of a store parking lot, such as one Vons cart that was complete with a colorful advertisement for organic foods and a black cup holder. Others were broken, rusted, aged by the elements and useless to both shoppers and businesses, the store of their origin unidentifiable.

"Before the ordinance was put in place, nobody thought about it (abandoned shopping carts)," Rich O'Donnell, deputy director of maintenance and operations for the city of Escondido, said Thursday at the public works yard. "People took them, and most businesses let people take them, and we had shopping carts cluttering our streets."

Businesses held responsible

The ordinance is changing that, O'Donnell said. He already has seen a reduction in the number of abandoned carts his employees pick up, he said. During code enforcement sweeps in December and January, city workers found six and 10 shopping carts respectively in different neighborhoods.

"I would expect a huge reduction (in the number of abandoned shopping carts), way more than half," O'Donnell said. "I'm talking a 75 to 80 percent reduction."

While taking shopping carts is illegal, most businesses are loathe to prosecute their customers, which has made negating the abandoned cart problem difficult in the past, Planning Director Jon Brindle said last week.

"One of the concerns we had that led to the ordinance was that oftentimes those owning the carts would not prosecute those that took them," Brindle said. "Often it was heard that that was just the cost of doing business, and that the proprietors did not want to prosecute their clients."

Under the ordinance, stores that use shopping carts are required to submit a plan for keeping their carts on their property to the city and must employ a cart retrieval company to return lost carts to the site.

Stores also must inventory the number of shopping carts they have and keep statistics on how many are lost and retrieved. They are required to put signs by the store entrances notifying customers that taking the shopping carts is illegal, as well as put signs on the carts with the store's name and address or phone number.

Last week, a new code enforcement associate in a newly created position whose principal job is to collect abandoned shopping carts, inform the businesses that own them and collect data about those that are found abandoned began working for the city. Before long, the city attorney's office could begin prosecuting businesses that aren't fulfilling their responsibilities under the new law, Brindle said last week.

Stopping runaway carts

Escondido stores' containment plans range from high tech to no tech to one innovative solution that also adds a unique customer service element.

At the 99 Cents Only Store on East Valley Parkway, a dotted line of bright yellow bumps runs along the outer edge of the store's parking lot. Like at several other Escondido retailers, 99 Cents shopping carts have been fitted with an electronic sensor that automatically locks the front wheels on the carts if they go past the yellow line.

Amanda Mendoza, an assistant manager at the store, said the system has been in place about seven to eight months and has reduced the number of carts that disappear from the parking lot.

"With this system it's much better," Mendoza said in Spanish. "The store loses a lot of money because of the lost carts."

A shopping cart can cost as much as $120.

At El Tigre Foods at Escondido Boulevard and Washington Avenue, the store expanded a program it had in place before the ordinance was passed, said manager David Cardiel.

The supermarket's shopping carts often disappear because some customers don't have cars and walk home with their groceries, he said. So, El Tigre provides a free shuttle service that transports customers and their groceries home if they live within five miles of the store.

The shuttle van used to leave every hour, but since the ordinance was passed, the van now leaves very half-hour from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, which has reduced the number of lost carts, Cardiel said.

"We cut it big time," he said last week.

Other stores have taken a simpler approach.

At the Ralphs supermarket on East Valley Parkway, employees have been trained to keep an eye on the carts and stop anyone seen walking off with one, manager Nina Alessi said. Between that and the store's cart retrieval service, which returns carts to the store twice a day, Ralphs has few problems with lost carts, she said.

"We have a couple that wander off, but they usually come back," Alessi said.

Most stores complying

After the council passed the ordinance in August, city officials gave area businesses a grace period until Dec. 7 to meet all of the new law's requirements, Brindle said.

Of 117 businesses that were told they need to comply with the ordinance, 41 have submitted plans, while 50 have informed the city that they don't provide shopping carts for their customers, he said.

City officials are in the process of contacting the remaining stores to determine whether they should have a plan, Brindle said. Once the city decides that certain businesses are clearly ignoring or violating the ordinance, or when Escondido has compiled data on the carts it is collecting, he said the city may take legal action.

"At this point I don't think we have a handle on who the biggest violators are," Brindle said.

While state law mandates a $50 fine for businesses that don't retrieve their abandoned shopping carts within three days, Escondido's new ordinance has a bit more punch to it.

If a store's shopping cart containment plan is never approved by the city or is deemed ineffective, or it fails to meet other requirements of the ordinance, the business owner could be charged with a misdemeanor and face up to a $1,000 fine and/or up to six months in jail.

When a plan is rejected by the city, the store has 10 days to submit a corrected plan, the ordinance says. Also, an approved plan is considered ineffective if more than five shopping carts per week from a single store are found off the business's property.

For each day a store is considered to be violating the ordinance, it can be charged with a separate offense.

Deputy City Attorney Gary McCarthy said he won't rush to prosecute a store for lack of a cart containment plan until he has all of the facts. Most likely, he said, repeat offenders will be the ones that find themselves in court or facing a serious penalty such as jail time for store officials.

"When you prosecute a case, you have to figure out, is there a violation, are we talking to the right people, are there even shopping carts (at the store)?" McCarthy said.

Contact staff writer Paul Eakins at (760) 740-5420 or peakins@nctimes.com.