Council to act on unwanted deliveries

By OWEN BOSS
Staff Writer

NORTHAMPTON — Urged on by city residents fed up with the delivery of the Springfield Republican’s “Extra” supplement every week, City Council President David J. Narkewicz has proposed an ordinance aimed at dealing with “unsolicited publications.”

“I had hoped to avoid taking legislative action on the ‘Extra’ purple bag issue,” Narkewicz said in an email, “but after months of the city going back and forth with The Republican and fielding continued complaints from residents, I researched and proposed a new, stand-alone ordinance.”

The ordinance is co-sponsored by Ward 3 City Councilor Angela Plassmann. In coming months, members of the city’s Board of Public Works, the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Housing and Land Use, and the Subcommittee on Elections, Rules, Orders, Ordinances and Claims will consider the ordinance and make their recommendations before the proposal returns to City Council for debate and votes.

Rather than ban the delivery of free newspapers, supplements and other publications, Narkewicz said, the new ordinance imposes clear guidelines for how they can be delivered and requires that the publisher and its distributor respect requests from residents who no longer wish to receive a given publication.

“I believe it is completely reasonable for a Northampton resident to expect that, upon request, a newspaper publishing company will stop delivering a publication to which the resident did not subscribe and does not wish to receive,” Narkewicz said. “It is also completely reasonable for Northampton residents to not have unwanted, unsightly, and unrecyclable purple bags strewn around their property and city causing potential harm to the environment, public safety, and private property.”

The Republican Extra is a weekly commercial delivery system targeting 8,200 Northampton households each Wednesday with paid advertisements and store coupons.

Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com