Re: Friends of the Library declared profit seekers by postal clerk

["John and Laurie Danahy" <JDANAHY@turbonet.com>]

Tim;
     As a member of this community and a local postal employee, I too was
appalled at your story.  Be assured, I will print out your e-mail and take
it to the postmaster so he and the "omnipotent employee' can try and work
with the FOL to resolve these problems.
John
John and Laurie Danahy
jdanahy@turbonet.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Hillebrand <thillebr@moscow.com>
To: Vision2020 <vision2020@moscow.com>
Cc: Daily News <editor@moscow.com>
Date: Wednesday, March 31, 1999 9:33 AM
Subject: Friends of the Library declared profit seekers by postal clerk


>A postal clerk at the Moscow post office has taken it upon herself to
>declare unilaterally that the Friends of the Library are not part of the
>Library and, therefore, not a non-profit organization. For two days (so
far)
>she has held up a bulk mailing of the Friends newsletter announcing our
book
>sale April 10th at Eastside MarketPlace. The revenue from the book sale is
>used to finance the children's' summer reading program in which we
>anticipate 1500 kids will participate this summer. When we eventually found
>out that our mailing had been held up, the director of the library and the
>president of the board of directors rushed over to inform the misguided,
>officious clerk that the Friends were very much a part of the Library and
>that the Library depended on them for many extras that the limited budget
>does not allow and that this mailing was very important to the community as
>a whole. Additional letters of testimony, mission statements, and brochures
>did not satisfy the omnipotent clerk. Now she wanted minutes from the board
>meetings showing the relationship between the Friends and the Library.
Sadly
>no such minutes exist because the Friends have been serving the Library's
>extra needs since before the turn of the century and any such minutes are
no
>longer extant. Of course it was impossible to call an impromptu board
>meeting to generate such minutes. We even offered to cross out the line,
>"Friends of the Library" on every single piece. But that would not satisfy
>the petty tyrant either. So, the clerk demanded that we pay the full price
>for the mailing and denied us the economical non-profit bulk rate. This
>extra money of course will be taken from the money that would have gone to
>the children for the summer reading program. I wonder how such a person
>measures the success of her day. No doubt she goes home after a hard day of
>harassing postal customers and says to herself, "Well, I stopped another
>non-profit organization from doing some good for the community today, and
>this time I almost screwed the kids out of their summer reading program-at
>least they won't get as much money as they could have had. Think I'll have
a
>cool one to celebrate." Is the post office the enemy of children now, or is
>it just this power hungry, petty bureaucrat clerk who wishes to harm the
>children of our community? We'll see how the battle continues as we are
made
>to jump through the hoops of postal bureaucracy to prove that the Friends
of
>the Library are not a profit making scam using the post office to defraud
>innocent people somehow.
>
>The term "Postal" takes on a new dimension. Of course the initial "PO"
>stands for post office and the "stal" is short for stall. I look forward to
>the day when we don't have to be held hostage by  the post office, a day
>when all communication can be conducted via email. Perhaps we should only
>accept members for Friends of the Library who have email. What the post
>office needs is some serious competition and a sense of commitment to the
>community they serve. In case you would like to see our newsletter before
>the post office gets around to delivering it, you can check it out at
>http://www.synergetics.org/FriendsWS/index.html.
>
>Hope to see you at the annual book sale at Eastside MarketPlace on
Saturday,
>April 10th.  You can help the kids this summer and get some great books at
>incredible prices at the same time-even if the post office doesn't want to
>help our kids learn to read.
>
>