Under the city's handbill ordinance, fliers can be distributed house to house if they include the business license number. In setting the record straight at tonight's East Village Association meeting, 1st Ward aide Ronda Locke acknowledged that most fliers don't include that information. Also, ads should not block the locks on doors and gates. Typically, fliers hung on doorknobs do exactly that. Nonetheless, Locke says the 2007 city ordinance is not as sweeping as the draft that 1st Ward Ald. Manny Flores introduced at the urging of the East Village Garden Club's Jeanne Felknor. And in practice, the fines of $200 to $1,000 are not imposed. "Streets & Sanitation will only go after non-compliance if it is very blatantly excessive," Locke said. "If. however, you post something that says 'No Soliciting' at the entrance, the handbills cannot be distributed."

By Neal McKnight  Everyday I come home to fliers strapped to my fence, stuffed in my gate or taped to my mailbox, for offers to repair my sewer, seal my basement or deliver a pizza. I know I am not alone. As I walk through the neighborhood I see piles of these fliers in doorways, gangways and parkways. These fliers are wasteful because most of the paper ends up in the garbage. These fliers are costly because the city must clean our streets and alleys to get rid of them. These fliers are ugly, one of our primary sources of litter. And often they are illegal. The East Village Association needs your help to solve this problem and clean up our neighborhood. At the same time, we can all help show how much of problem it really has become.

City Council recently passed a law that regulates the distribution of commercial handbills - specifically, the menus, coupons, newspapers, and directories that seem to appear with ever-increasing regularity on our porches, doors, and fences. Ald. Manny Flores introduced the ordinance after an East Village resident showed him how much of the area’s trash consisted of these materials. The ordinance prohibits hanging items on door knobs or gates, stuffing papers in or under doors and gates, dropping off on property premises, attaching materials to unoccupied vehicles, and posting materials on public property (such as an ad on a lamppost). For handbills to be legally distributed, they need to have a business license number visible on the material, and placed “in an alternative receiving bin as provided by the property owner”. This law does not apply to hand-to-hand distributed items. The ordinance also requires newspapers to be bagged or bound. In addition, newspapers, magazines and dire...