County Manager
Citizen newsletter & cost-savings
In this digital day and ago, why does Arlington County government continue to print and deliver a hard copy newsletter to residents? The information below will help explain why we continue to produce an "old school" publication to Arlingtonians.
Citizen readership
In the 2008 Resident Satisfaction Survey, 65% of Arlingtonians reported that the Citizen newsletter is their number one source for information about Arlington. The number two source was the Washington Post, at 62%. The survey results also show that 73% of Arlingtonians are satisfied with the quality of the Citizen. Anecdotally (and we have some data to corroborate this), seniors and Spanish-speaking residents are two groups with even a higher rate of readership.
Keeping costs low
It costs the County about 25 cents per newsletter to produce, print and deliver to residents. We currently use the cheapest postage rate available from the U.S. Postal Service – “simplified mailing address” (formerly known as “bulk mail”). Letter carriers are instructed to deliver one copy to every household in Arlington. Our current postage rate is about 11 cents per piece.
More money-saving moves
The Citizen is a joint production of Arlington County and Arlington Public Schools, and costs are shared. Over the years, we have made a number of money-saving moves, including:
- Switched from sheet-fed press to web press, which dramatically reduced printing costs. This enabled us to increase from 4 to 6 issues per year, and move from two-color to four-color printing – while staying in virtually the same budget. (Note: for Fiscal Years 2010 and 2011, due to budget cuts, we have cut back to 5 issues per year.)
- The new format enables us to include inserts for the same postage charge. The County’s water department, for example, is now able to provide the state-mandated annual Water Quality Report to twice as many residents for half the cost of the former mailed brochure … thus leveraging the Citizen to provide an improved service to more people, for less money.
- We have tinkered with different sizes of paper – and paper weights – to reduce printing costs even further. Beginning in July 2009, we began using a lower weight paper, which lowered our costs about $1,300 per issue, or $7,800 per year.
- Beginning in 2007, we began inserting a special pull-out section of the "Enjoy Arlington" annual recreation guide, thus delivering the guide to all households at a fraction of the cost of mailing it separately.
- Beginning in 2010, the County’s Commuter Services began leveraging the Citizen newsletter to deliver important transit information to residents, at a much lower cost than other direct methods.
- We also maintain an online version of the Citizen newsletter; you can subscribe to RSS feeds and post comments.
Success stories
We receive a lot of anecdotal feedback on the impact that the Citizen can have on residents’ lives. For example:
- The Police Department tells us that a story in the Citizen encouraging people to register bikes is the number one source of new registrations.
- A story about Volunteer Guardians inspired at least one Arlingtonian to pick up the phone and volunteer to be a Guardian herself.
- A Spanish-speaking resident got in touch with us after reading the Citizen to inquire about computer classes in Spanish.
What about letting people opt-out?
And some residents have asked: Could Arlington County save money by allowing residents to opt-out of receiving hard copies of the Citizen newsletter? Bottom line: Developing a system in which residents can opt-out of receiving hard copies of the Citizen would actually cost more money.
The current method costs about 25 cents per newsletter to print and deliver to residents. We estimate the cost of moving to an opt-out system to be at least $84,600 per year.
Printing: Because of our high volume of printing (110,000 copies), the per-piece cost is very low. In fact, printing 10,000 fewer copies would only save about $600 per issue, or $3,600 per year.
Postage: We currently use the cheapest postage rate available from the U.S. Postal Service – “simplified mailing address” (formerly known as “bulk mail”). The letter carriers are instructed to deliver one copy to every household in Arlington; the issues are not labeled for delivery to individual addresses. Our current postage rate is about 11 cents per piece.
To move to an “opt-out” system: To make the change, we would have to take a number of costly steps:
- Our per-piece postage rate would increase from 11 cents per piece to at least 20 cents per piece, since we would switch to a delivery method in which we would label each issue – this is called “automation compatible.” This would increase our postage costs by at least $9,450 per issue, or $56,700 a year.
- The new method requires that each copy be labeled individually -- this labeling would cost an additional $1,500 per issue, or $9,000 per year.
- The new method also requires each copy be sealed with a wafer seal – this would cost an additional $3,150 (or $18,900 per year).
- We would also have to spend considerable staff time and money to create a process and system for enabling residents to sign up via a website, which would then feed into a spreadsheet for use by the print/mail vendor. An alternative would be to contract with a mailing vendor to provide this service.
