Philly stops fining businesses for leaving unwanted menus and circulars at homes

Every week, self-described “trash nut” Matt Barbee sweeps the menus and coupon booklets that pile up in front of his Roxborough home.

What annoys him more is that he has the black-and-white sticker displayed prominently on his front door to show he’s enrolled in the city’s Circular Free Properties Program — a three-decade-old initiative that bars businesses from leaving unwanted handbills on private property.

But the tide of littered papers hasn’t ceased.

“Every morning, I walk the block with my Home Depot bucket and pick up trash, and every Friday there are more rain-soaked circulars that people haven’t picked up,” Barbee said.

Barbee has filed half a dozen complaints with the Department of Licenses and Inspections this year against businesses for not heeding the anti-circular warning. After months of silence, he began to suspect that the city was sending the complaints into a “black hole” instead of issuing fines to violators.

His complaints weren’t the only ones going ignored.

In the last two years, the city has all but ceased enforcement against businesses that flout the city’s no-circular program, according to data provided by L&I.

In past years, the city would dole out as many as 850 fines for $100 annually, but officials have issued just one handbill-related fine this year, and issued fewer than two dozen in 2021.

Facing a citywide municipal staffing shortage, Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration said L&I ceased anti-circular enforcement due to “higher priority” issues, but also insisted that widespread compliance with the law is driving down complaints. Officials could not provide evidence that complaints had plummeted — because they said they do not track them.

Critics worry that the lack of enforcement could have negative consequences, as pamphlets contribute a considerable amount of litter to the city’s notoriously filthy roadways.

“Once the handbill deliveries catch wind of it, they’ll put them anywhere,” said Nic Esposito, an East Kensington resident and the former head of the city’s anti-litter cabinet, which was eliminated during pandemic budget cuts.

The no-circular program launched in 1993, and more than 15,300 properties have enrolled to date. Since its inception, the city has slapped offending businesses with more than $1.4 million in fines and penalties to date. But the city has also forgiven more than half of that sum. Officials said many businesses appeal the fines or enter settlement payments.

Even prior to the pandemic, fine issuance had been waning under the Kenney administration, with an annual average of 288 between 2016 and 2019. In the decade before he took office, the city averaged more than 600 fines per year.

City spokesperson Kevin Lessard said the sole fine issued so far in 2022 is likely due to a procedural change that led officials to issue warnings instead of fines for six months.

Overall, he argued the anti-circular program has been a success, changing the way businesses distribute their adverts around town.

“It’s become widely accepted that if you don’t want advertisements and other material left at your house, you shouldn’t have to put up with it,” said Lessard.

Meanwhile, residents like Andy Lee, of South Philadelphia, continue to file complaints online, submitting photographic evidence of the offending circulars.

“I’d say over 20% of my block has stickers and I’ve reported with pictures a bunch,” Lee said.

Some residents said they saw a marked decrease in circulars after signing up for the stickers — which was made easier through an online application in recent years.

“I don’t get door hangers or as much stuff in my mailbox,” said Catharine Hofmann of West Philadelphia, who enrolled in the program in March. “But there’s a lot of people who don’t even come up [to see the door sticker]. The pizza guys just stick it in the porch railing.”

Hofmann said she filed a complaint this year and heard nothing back. City officials said they did not notify residents if a fine had been issued in response to a complaint.

In the past, anti-litter advocates have argued for increasing those fines to send a stronger message.

“It’s a waste of money if they’re sending these decals out but not paying someone to sit there and process the complaints,” said Barbee, the regular circular sweeper in Roxborough.

To Esposito, the city’s former trash czar, the fundamental flaw is forcing residents to opt out instead of opting in to receiving solicitations on their doorsteps.

A study conducted during his tenure with the city found that hundreds of handbills end up blowing around the streets each week, compounding the city’s litter crisis.

“This is a good opportunity to change the law instead of adding more inspectors,” Esposito said.

Lessard, the city spokesperson, said there could be legal and operational hurdles to establishing an opt-in system, which “would require a greater investment of City resources.”

Reading a menu left on her stoop in Kensington on Wednesday, Ashley Nilan, who is not enrolled in the program, said she worries about missing out on important neighborhood news in between the deluge of promotionals.

“We’re worried that we won’t get any of the flyers with news regarding the neighborhood meetings and such,” she said. “So we just take all the flyers, and throw them in the recycling.”

For some small businesses, hand-delivering menus and coupon books to neighborhood homes is the most cost-effective way to advertise, and reach an audience that doesn’t use or have access to the internet.

“One, they don’t have a lot of the tech expertise to do sophisticated marketing,” said Alex Balloon, who spent a decade as the director of the Tacony Community Development Corporation in Northeast Philly, “and two, direct mail is extremely expensive.”

Still, it was a frequent source of annoyance for neighbors trying to keep their streets clean.

“People are just fed up with it,” he said.

Staff photographer Tom Gralish contributed reporting.