MOSES LAKE — Revisions to Moses Lake’s ordinance for the use of public sidewalks and a new ordinance governing shopping carts taken from businesses will be voted on at the July 22 Moses Lake City Council meeting. Council members reviewed the proposed ordinances during the July 8 meeting, and council member Don Myers suggested a change to the proposed shopping cart ordinance.  

“I was looking at Federal Way, and they had a (provision) in there that waived the fee for shopping cart retrieval if (the business) had security measures in place for shopping carts,” Myers said. 

Businesses that took measures to keep carts from being taken were not fined when city personnel had to collect them, Myers said.  

“I’d like to encourage the businesses to have those measures so that we have less carts to pick up. That’s one portion of their code that I’d like to add to ours,” he said. 

The ordinance designates abandoned shopping carts as a public nuisance. When city employees pick them up, they’re impounded, and the owners will be required to come get them and pay a $30 per cart fee. If they’re not picked up within two weeks, the city can dispose of them and charge the owner an additional $70 fee. 

The ordinance governing sitting and lying on public sidewalks establishes a zone where those activities are prohibited between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. The zone includes West Broadway Avenue from the intersection with West Third Avenue to State Route 17. It also takes West Third Avenue from the West Broadway intersection to the intersection with East Broadway Avenue.  

A section of North Stratford Road to West Valley Road is part of the zone. Myers suggested including more of Stratford Road to the SR 17 intersection, or as close to SR 17 as allowed. 

Sections of Stratford Road are in the jurisdiction of the Washington Department of Transportation.  

A section of Pioneer Way from East Olive Avenue to the East Broadway Avenue intersection is part of the zone. So is South Division Street from West Fifth Avenue to West Broadway. Connecting streets within that zone are included; depending on the street, the zone extends to Fourth Street in some sections, Fifth Street in others. 

Mayor Dustin Swartz said the prohibitions do not apply to people in city parks, where sitting, lying and sleeping are allowed when the parks are open.  

Council member Deanna Martinez said some of the boundary borders on residential neighborhoods.  

“We are pushing people out of this area. I understand the concept, but now there’s a potential for neighborhoods to have to deal with this issue,” Martinez said. “Any thoughts on how the city is going to deal with that?” 

Moses Lake Police Chief Dave Sands said West Third Avenue and the surrounding area haven’t experienced a lot of people sleeping there, although things change. He was concerned about expanding the zone so far that enforcement would become difficult. 

Martinez said she did not advocate expanding the zone, but that people who might use sidewalks to sleep would be pushed into surrounding areas, many of them residential. Sands said the zone could be adjusted as necessary.