Sep 20, 2011 - Write a letter to the AT&T Yellow Pages regarding their phone book drop-off, ... service will reduce
37 Berkeley City Council
CONSENT CALENDAR September 20, 2011 To:
Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council
From:
Councilmember Laurie Capitelli Councilmember Gordon Wozniak
Subject:
Opting Out of Phone Book Delivery
RECOMMENDATION Request that the City Manager: 1. Write a letter to the AT&T Yellow Pages regarding their phone book drop-off, requesting that they honor the voluntary opt-out program as provided through the City of Berkeley’s Catalog Choice program; and 2. Refer to Alameda County StopWaste.org the Seattle phone book opt-out ordinance to consider development of a model ordinance for jurisdictions within the county. FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS Staff time to draft and send letters. BACKGROUND Last year, in an effort to reduce the City’s waste stream, the City Council approved a pilot program with Catalog Choice to develop a City of Berkeley-specific program that allows Berkeley citizens to opt out of unwanted catalog deliveries. Catalog Choice provides a mechanism that both protects privacy and maintains a current database that can be used for follow up and compliance. Catalog Choice also provides residents the opportunity to opt-out of phone book deliveries. Reducing the distribution of unwanted phone books would also have significant waste reduction benefits to the City. Currently, compliance by the phone book publishers, AT&T and the Valley Yellow Pages currently deliver phone books in Berkeley, is voluntary. In the past month, Valley Yellow pages has engaged in discussions with Catalog Choice to honor our citizens’ opt-out requests. Currently, Berkeley residents must navigate through the AT&T website to locate the opt-out form and enter their request. This barrier makes it much more difficult for residents to opt-out of delivery. We ask that the City Council respectfully request that AT&T abide by the opt-out request parameters of Catalog Choice, encouraging more residents to exercise their options if they do not want extra phone books.
2180 Milvia Street, Berkeley, CA 94704
In April of this year, the City of Seattle implemented a phone book Opt-Out Ordinance with associated registry and phone book fee ($0.14 per book delivered in city and $125 per book penalty). In the first three weeks of the program over 30,000 new accounts were opened on the City’s opt-out registry. Over 180,000 phone book opt-outs have been recorded since the adoption of the ordinance, accounting for approximately 10% of the deliveries. Representatives from the phone book industry sued Seattle and tried to stop launch of registry with Motion for Preliminary Injunction. The Motion was denied. We further suggest that Alameda County’s StopWaste.org develop a model ordinance for jurisdictions within the county, similar to Seattle’s, to be funded by proceeds from phone book fees and enforced by voluntary reporting through an outside opt-out program.
CONTACT PERSON Councilmember Laurie Capitelli, District 5 Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, District 8 ATTACHMENTS: Seattle Ordinance: http://vimeo.com/24851606 Draft Letter to AT&T Yellow Pages
981-7150 981-7180
Draft Letter to AT&T Mike Barry Director - Public Policy AT&T Advertising Solutions
[email protected] Phone: (248) 483-4640 Dear Mr. Barry The City of Berkeley recently launched a program to offer our citizens a free and effective tool for opting-out of unwanted mail and phone books. This City-sponsored service will reduce the amount of unwanted paper being delivered within our city limits and will result in lower disposal costs for Berkeley. You can view our service at http://berkeley.catalogchoice.org. Currently, our program is not mandated by a local ordinance, like the City of Seattle and City of San Francisco have passed. We are working cooperatively with thousands of companies to deliver and confirm opt-outs through our vendor, Catalog Choice. It has been brought to our attention that AT&T is not accepting opt-out requests entered through our service. Currently, Berkeley residents must navigate through the AT&T website to locate your opt-out form and enter their request. Berkeley residents must be able to easily communicate opt-out choices for any and all unsolicited advertising delivered to residences and offices in our city. Like the City of Seattle and other communities, we chose to work with Catalog Choice instead of the industry opt-out websites for a variety of reasons.
They provide a one-stop service for junk mail and phone book suppression. They are free from industry conflicts of interest. They are a reputable, independent organization endorsed by several cities, hundreds of companies and over one million Americans. They protect the privacy of our residents’ personal email address when making an opt-out request and responding to company confirmations. They have a confirmation and dispute resolution process that has been used successfully by hundreds of companies for several years. They can support offline opt-out methods include a local phone number and a mail-in service. They provide our staff with critical reporting tools. They provide a robust complaint and compliance monitoring system.
Please inform us by October 21, 2011 regarding your plans to accept and process optout requests from Berkeley citizens managed by Catalog Choice. AT&T is a responsible corporation conducting business in our city, and we expect the company to process these requests in a consistent and timely manner.
