The Aberdeen City Council has its sights on cleaning up the city, meanwhile an outside agency has its sights on the city.

Through the last couple months, the city council has discussed the containment and retrieval of shopping carts that homeless people have been pushing around the city.

Through many areas in town, carts are left in parking lots, on sidewalks, sometimes with belongings and sometimes not. Quite a few people have expressed irritation toward the sight of the carts that are strewn throughout the city. The city wants to put the onus on the stores.

On Wednesday night, the council read the second reading of the ordinance regarding shopping cart containment and retrieval. It was a major discussion point. However, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Washington (ACLU) finds fault with the proposed ordinance and so it addressed a letter Wednesday to Aberdeen Mayor Pete Schave, the entire city council and Forest Worgum, Aberdeen’s deputy corporation counselor.

“Aberdeen’s confiscation of unhoused individuals’ personal property is problematic,” the letter reads. “Aberdeen’s current targeting of unhoused individuals’ possessions kept in shopping carts likely implicates constitutional rights of the unhoused. We understand the city has confiscated individuals’ belongings in shopping carts not only at the library, but also throughout the city without adequate notice and opportunity to reclaim their possessions.”

Early in June, the city’s code enforcement branch mandated shopping carts stay clear of the entrance of the library. Since the clean up, a productive one without any reported problems, the carts have not hung around outside the library. The city has a clear policy in place where if code enforcement removes a cart that the person who has belongings in that cart must come and retrieve their cart.

The ACLU argued in its letter, since the library allows unhoused persons to seek shelter from bad weather and that they must leave the shopping cart that transports their belongings, that the city seizing the carts and the personal property inside them is “concerning.” The foundation said the city is “likely confiscating shopping carts that have not, in fact, been abandoned.”

The foundation claims there’s little information as to what happens to the shopping carts or the contents inside them after the city confiscates them. It argues the city provides little information how an individual dependent on the cart could recover their belongings from the confiscated cart.

All that said, it doesn’t sound the ACLU’s letter was appreciated. Stan Sidor, Aberdeen city councilor, aired his concerns.

“I want to go on the record and publicly state, at least for myself, I’m not gonna be intimidated by, or held hostage by the ACLU,” Sidor said. “And I will not acquiesce to any demands or threats that they make on this issue or the other issues they raise. I think we’ve got an obligation to ensure a safe and clean city environment. Yes, respect rights, but also impose responsibility where it’s necessary, so I just wanted that on record.”

Sidor was not alone in his statement. Kacey Ann Morrison, Aberdeen city councilor, added onto what Sidor said.

“I just wanted to say real quick I’d also like to be on the record for the same sentiments that council member Sidor said,” Morrison said. “We have to look out for our entire city and all the citizens. I don’t think it’s good to be badgered by some fringe, outside agency.”

Patty Thomas, a resident of Aberdeen’s Ward 5, just wants the city to be cleaned up. Thomas said she has researched through the last couple years about the shopping cart issue around the city. She spoke to the city council about it.

“I would like to thank you, Ruth (Clemens) especially, for bringing this forward and seeing to it that this is done,” Thomas said about the city’s new effort to contain and retrieve shopping carts. “It was already a year-and-a-half ago that I started working on this myself personally.”

Thomas was referring to her research into the existing code about shopping carts. Thomas said the city has had a code for years and she claimed the city just hasn’t really done much about the carts.

“We have a code,” Thomas said. “There’s no reason for these carts to be all over town like they have been.”

Thomas said she got a public disclosure request in April 2022. She asked for information going back to the “beginning of 2019.”

“I wanted to know how many carts (the city) retrieved, how much money they collected and what was done with the funds,” Thomas said.

Thomas said she found out the city picked up one cart and collected $30 from Home Depot for the cart retrieval. From her public disclosure binder, she showed a sheet that states the date of cart removal in question — April 16, 2019. She said the cart issue has gotten worse. She said she has photos of the ongoing issue.

“I do believe the last few years we saw hundreds of carts out there and nothing is ever being done about it,” Thomas said. “And all of these excuses and there is no excuse. There’s no excuse. So I do thank Ruth for doing this. And I do hope the city council takes the time to see that in each of their wards that the carts are picked up.”

Thomas thinks cleaning up the wayward carts would help “solve a lot of problems.”

“I can’t get any answers and I want the city to clean up, I want it to be right for the kids,” Thomas said. “That’s what I said, I’m 80 years-old. If I do anything I’ll fight for the kids, and for us to have a nice place.”

Liz Ellis, Aberdeen city councilor, said she brought up the shopping cart issue as her concern “that the city wasn’t enforcing the code that we had on the books and how to make that stronger.”

“The city was absorbing all the costs of retrieving and storing and disposing of where they’re basically private property,” Ellis said. “So I’m pleased this ordinance puts the responsibility back with the store owners and recoups more of the real costs for city staff removal.”

Ellis said after the meeting the intention of the ordinance is both to pass legal muster and at the same time respect the rights of the vulnerable residents in Aberdeen.

Debi Pieraccini, Aberdeen city councilor, said she’s “excited” about the city’s effort to solve the shopping cart issue.

“Somebody has to be accountable and it needs to be the people who own them,” Pieraccini said. “They do have the ability to put in that shopping cart zone where they can’t be moved off of their parking lot. I know that’s expensive but a shopping cart is $400 to $500. As they float away you could have paid for the ability to keep them on your lot. I think having them be responsible is the only way we can do it.”

Dee Anne Shaw, Aberdeen city councilor, seems to want to get correspondence, such as the ACLU’s current letter, in the public record.

“(It’s) because they were definitely responding and putting us on notice about their position on three things on tonight’s agenda,” Shaw said. “How do we get that incorporated so that information is available to anyone who cares to look and see what we’re being told.”

Shaw said the point mostly occurred to her because “they were specifically addressing items on our agenda, which struck me as more as public comment.”

“But also for the record, the shopping cart — of the items they brought up — their comment was curiously misinformed and doesn’t support by the record what our intent is so I’m very comfortable moving forward with this,” Shaw said.

Schave doesn’t seem to take to heart ACLU’s letter, either.

“We just got the correspondence for one thing and two, it was very frivolous,” Schave said. “I guess that’s putting it kindly. So, it wasn’t added to the agenda.”

Before the end of the meeting, Clemens said she would be drafting a response to the ACLU’s representative. It sounded as though she wants the approval of the city council and the city corporation counsel.

Vacant commercial building ordinance

The city council also made a second reading of Bill 23-07, an ordinance that would establish a new chapter related to maintenance of vacant commercial buildings in the downtown business district.

Before the second reading was approved, Shaw asked to make an amendment since she said she thinks the city council will be asked to adopt the ordinance at its next meeting.

“I just wanted to throw out that I noticed in reading the measure it calls for a report every odd-numbered year in January and I think that it might be good for us, this first year out, to have a report in January of the first year,” Shaw said. “And I think I’ll be asking for that when we go to adopt rather than waiting two years to see how it’s going.”

The amendment and the second reading of the ordinance was approved without other discussion.

Contact Reporter Matthew N. Wells at matthew.wells@thedailyworld.com.