From the Creedmoor Civic Association:"Are you tired of picking up circulars from in front of your house several times a week? Isn't it distressing to find a dozen packages of advertisements sitting on your front steps, on your front lawn and the sidewalk when you get back from a few days' vacation, knowing that it's a tip-off to even the most amateur burglar?
The tossing of unsolicited and unwanted advertisements onto our private properties has been a long-time complaint of many residents of NY City, especially Queens. Several legislators have attempted to pass laws prohibiting this, but these usually fail to pass First Amendment challenges.
A bill (#S.3420) has passed in the NY State Senate addressing this problem. It would require the placing of a small sign on your property stating that you do not want these unsolicited circulars. State Senator Frank Padavan, who is a sponsor of this bill, says that this bill, as written, will not be in violation of the circular distributor companies' "First Amendment" rights, since this will not prevent the delivery to those who want them.
This piece of legislation, called the "Lawn Litter Bill," has passed the State Senate and has gone to the State Assembly (Bill #A.6247). Unfortunately, for the past three years, bills that were very similar to it failed to be passed in the Assembly.
You can change that. You can help by printing out this simple, one page petition, and mailing it to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. He needs to know that YOU feel it's a big problem and you want it solved once and for all.Let your neighbors know also. For the price of a stamp and a few minutes of your time, you can make a difference. Even if you're not a homeowner, do it for your neighbors. If you're a NY State resident, or are in any way affected by these ads (they can be dangerous on rainy days), let the Speaker know now!
A PDF of this one-page petition is available here.
This needs to be sent out very soon, before the Assembly closes its session in the next three or four weeks.
Thank you."
Councilman Tony Avella introduced similar legislation in the NYC Council last year, and Simcha Felder did this year, but both of them got put on the back burner because the other council members have bigger priorities, like banning metal baseball bats and taking overseas junkets.
5 comments:
Why does one merchant have a First Amendment right to place papers on my household property, while another merchant has no First Amendment right to place papers on my car's windshield?
There either is or is not any First Amendment right to litter any type of property.
In the case of a flyer on my car windshield, a ticket it written against the merchant for every car where the flyer is found.
Why not have a ticket written for every flyer of any kind lying on or around any homeowner's property?
Make each ticket out to the merchant (for those pouches, make out a ticket for each merchant whose material is in the pouch).
Every merchant would retain its First Amendment right to publish flyers, and to mail them via USPS, but no more tossing rights.
There apparently is a very powerful lobbying force helping to keep these circulars coming to your door. Think about it, there are a lot of people that currently make their living littering your front lawn. Many of them will be out of jobs if this law is passed.
Do I feel sorry for them? Just a little. They now have time to look for other jobs, since this law takes effect 60 days after it's passed.
The ones that make the real money, however, are the distributing companies. Them, I don't feel too bad about.
No, not bad at all.
Excellent idea. I have 20 of these petitions already signed. If the rest of my neighbors don't all disappear this weekend, I should have about 40 more!
Finally, I can go on vacation and not worry about this garbage (to me that's what it is......goes right to the can). This has been a thorn in my side for years. No matter what you did to stop it, they always re-appeared.
The delivery people in a van actually dented my screen door when throwing the package from a truck. No one should be allowed to litter other's property!
FINE THEM
Finally the law is live!!!
I found a website where I signed up my house to get a free sign to work with the law:
www.stoplawnlitter.org
I reccomend that you ALL do the same and we can stop these litterbugs for good.
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