The shivering, necessitous shopping carts of Sault Ste. Marie have found their champion.
Matthew Shoemaker has agreed to take up their cause at Monday's City Council meeting.
The intrepid Ward 3 councillor wants to slap penalties on retailers who make little or no effort to rescue errant carts that stray like sheep from their establishments.
"Most often, shopping carts that leave a retail store’s property are left abandoned on sidewalks, boulevards or paths throughout the city," Shoemaker and his Ward 4 colleague Marchy Bruni lament in a resolution to be presented to City Council on Monday.
Many retail outlets employ local services to locate and recover wayward carts, but some don't, "allowing them to become a neighbourhood nuisance, and requiring taxpayer-funded public works employees to attend at various areas throughout the city to retrieve and dispose of the abandoned shopping carts," the social justice warriors state.
"It is common for shoppers to leave various retail stores with their shopping carts to facilitate their bringing home of groceries or other goods," Shoemaker and Bruni say.
"It is a civic responsibility of all businesses and residents in the City of Sault Ste. Marie to maintain the property standards and beauty of our city...."
"Now therefore be it resolved that the legal department and the public works department be requested to bring forward to City Council for its consideration a draft bylaw that would require retailers that use shopping carts to develop a shopping cart management plan for the retrieval and return of abandoned shopping carts outside of that retailer’s property boundaries."
"Further be it resolved that the draft bylaw ensures enforcement mechanisms are in place for retailers that do not comply or uphold their shopping cart management plan, once developed, or, alternatively, that penalties are in place for failing to develop a shopping cart management plan."
Shoemaker will introduce a further resolution on Monday, calling for free, all-day parking for all veterans on Remembrance Day.
If the initiative is approved by council, veterans with poppy licence plates will be allowed to park free at all municipal parking lots and on-street parking spaces for the entire day.
Monday's City Council meeting will be livestreamed on SooToday starting at 4:30 p.m., courtesy of Shaw Spotlight.