The San Francisco Board of Supervisors gave final approval Tuesday to legislation that will restrict the distribution of Yellow Pages phone books in the city.
The board voted 9-1 in favor of the ordinance, proposed by board president David Chiu, which will create a three-year pilot program that requires distributors of the Yellow Pages to ask residents and businesses if they would like a copy of the phone books before leaving them on doorsteps.
The program will not be enacted until May 2012 to give the phone book industry, which strongly opposed the proposal, time to implement it.
Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, who has questioned the legality of the law, was the lone dissenting vote. Supervisor David Campos was absent from Tuesday’s meeting.
Chiu said the legislation will reduce blight in the city caused by the unwanted phone books piling up on doorsteps, and will reduce the city’s costs to recycle them.
A report issued last week by Ted Egan, the city’s chief economist, found that the proposal will create more than 100 jobs and help San Francisco’s economy grow by $12.6 million annually.
Pete Hillan, a spokesman for the Yellow Pages Association, said after the board’s initial vote last week that the industry group plans on fighting the law in court in the coming months.
The legislation now goes to the desk of Mayor Ed Lee to be signed into law.
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