Welcome to Meadville PA

While looking at radio stations, I stumbled on this little item (no, not the Wienermobile crash)…

The city of Meadville has a number of good accomplishments. In the past 20 years, they have only had to raise the poperty tax rate 5 times. The $52 local city tax for everyone employed inside the city is making sure businesses leave. The retired employees are getting their promised pensions. Health care costs were kept to only an 19.6% increase last year.

2015 Budget Presentation

With all that good news, they didn’t stop there. The city fathers had time to pass a new Shopping Cart Leaving the Parking Lot ordinance.

Shopping Cart Law

The bullet points of this new city law:

• Shopping Carts must have a tag identifying who owns them
• The Store must post a warning sign explaining the ordinance
• Shopping Carts may not leave the parking lot, unless the owner gives a document to the person borrowing the cart – which must have a matching serial number and a special indicator that it is a cart that may be borrowed
• Borrowed carts must be stored out of public view
• When a cart is spotted off the property, the owner has 72 hours to pick it up
• If the city notifies the owner, the city will take the cart, store it for up to 10 days and charge a redemption fee
• If the owner doesn’t pick up the cart in 10 days, the city will sell it.
• A person found with an unauthorized cart outside of the parking lot or authorized but left in public view – can get up to 90 days in jail

So what do we think of this?

My next door Conservative Republican Good Christian(tm) neighbor Sam does this on a regular basis – he is 73, has dementia (according to him) – he goes next door to the supermarket, brings back the groceries in a store shopping cart – He has a car and can drive, and also has a little shopping cart you pull behind you that his son gave him.   He dumps the shopping cart outside my window, which might lead someone to believe *I* was the one that “borrowed it”.   The carts do go away – but I don’t know who returns them, and don’t know if the store has given him some tacit permission.   When I rarely go there, they have a shortage of carts, so I don’t think they want their carts vanishing for half a day, even if they aren’t ultimately being stolen for real.

The biggest cause of the nanny state is people’s bad behavior giving government permission to make up yet more laws.