May 14, 2025
The Honorable Dave Cortese
Member, California State Senate
State Capitol, Room # 7520
Sacramento, CA 95814
RE: SB 753 (Cortese) Abandoned Shopping Cart Recovery
Notice of SUPPORT (As Amended 03/24/25)
Dear Senator Cortese:
The City of Cupertino is pleased to support your Senate Bill (SB) 753, which would provide additional tools to local governments to address abandoned shopping carts in communities.
Abandoned shopping carts have created hazards by blocking streets and sidewalks and disrupting open spaces and waterways. SB 753 would modernize the laws requiring the collection of abandoned shopping carts and provide local governments and retailers with better tools to address this issue.
Under current law, local governments must store abandoned shopping carts in an impound lot, where they sit until a retailer retrieves them. This process has inherent challenges, especially for large municipalities, which would need to store hundreds of abandoned shopping carts at any given time to comply with this provision. The storage space and staff cost required to operate an impound lot is a burdensome and ineffective solution to this issue.
SB 753 would allow local governments to return carts directly to retailers by picking them up and immediately returning them without the current requirement for three-day notice or storage in an impound facility. Additionally, this measure would allow for the recovery of the actual costs of managing the program. This strikes the appropriate balance of creating an
efficient system to retrieve and return abandoned shopping carts while incentivizing retailers to work collaboratively with local governments to recover their stolen property.
For these reasons, the City of Cupertino is pleased to support SB 753.
Sincerely,
Liang Chao
Mayor
City of Cupertino
cc. The Honorable Josh Becker
The Honorable Patrick Ahrens