Oct. 1—ESPAÑOLA — Mike War was en route to Dollar General, a routine trek for him, pushing a shopping cart containing various belongings on a sidewalk about 50 yards from where he would traverse a bridge over the Rio Grande as traffic flowed past.
“It helps,” he said of the shopping cart, lunching on a hot dog amid the journey.
In an attempt to address the litter and the clustering of stolen shopping carts in a city where concerns about homelessness have persisted, Española officials are looking elsewhere for solutions — even to Gainesville, Fla., a sun-stained city more than a thousand miles away. Leaders there have enacted a measure requiring businesses to have a retention system for carts to prevent thefts…