Assessor’s Claims Puzzle Postal Workers Official Says Notices Held Up Because Of Lack Of Cooperation

The Spokane County assessor says she needs two additional full-time workers to help find information the U.S. Postal Service refuses to provide, even though it could do so easily.

But Postal Service officials say they’re getting a bum rap.

Assessor Charlene Cooney hasn’t asked for help, said a postal worker in Medical Lake. In Airway Heights, she asked and was helped, said the postmaster there.

Cooney told county commissioners Thursday that 7,600 of the 200,000 property valuation notices her office mailed in the last two years were returned by local post offices.

The letters were marked undeliverable because they were sent to the landowners’ street addresses, rather than post office boxes. Not only did postal workers reject the letters, Cooney said, but they won’t help county staff find the correct addresses.

As a result, Cooney’s staff must do time-consuming sleuthing - checking phone books and city directories, or even calling neighbors in their search for the true address. Once it’s found, the county mails the letters again, at a cost of 32 cents apiece.

Cooney figures she’s spent $4,000 in staff time tracking down addresses this year. And her office isn’t keeping up. She asked commissioners for money to hire two clerks who would spend 18 months doing little else but search for addresses.

Commissioner Kate McCaslin suggested instead asking U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt to persuade postal workers to be more cooperative. McCaslin called the situation “bureaucracy at its most ridiculous.”

Cooney was especially critical of the Airway Heights, Medical Lake and Deer Park post offices.

“These cities utilize post boxes and do not deliver to physical street addresses,” she wrote in a letter delivered to commissioners during the meeting. “When we request their assistance with correct post box information, they advise us they are not allowed to release that information.”

The letter puzzled Dennis Snider, who is in charge of undeliverable mail at the Medical Lake Post Office. Snider said Cooney never contacted him. “I would certainly be able to work with her,” said Snider.

It’s true that post offices can’t release addresses by phone - a regulation meant to thwart stalkers and other ne’er-do-wells. But, Snider said, his office will respond to official requests.

“I’ve done that for Washington Water Power and the phone company,” he said.

Airway Heights Postmaster Vern Taylor said he worked with the assessor’s office last year, and was able to track down some of the addresses. But finding the information isn’t as easy as Cooney thinks, he said. As many as seven neighbors sometimes share a post box to save money, said Taylor. In such cases, one person is registered as the boxholder, with the others listed as secondary users. Only the primary users are easy to cross-reference, Taylor said.

Even if a letter is improperly addressed, Airway Heights postal workers do their best to deliver, Taylor said. “Our local policy is, if we know where (a letter) goes, we deliver it,” he said. “But if we don’t know, we’re not going to guess.”

Cooney said she was surprised by the way postal workers responded when shown a copy of her letter.

“Isn’t it interesting that (a reporter) would get such a totally different answer than we did?” she asked.

In June, the county’s elections office had a problem similar to the one Cooney reported. About 13,000 of 231,000 mail-in ballots for the Seahawks stadium proposal were returned from rural areas because they had the wrong address or didn’t list post office box numbers.

The ballots were in envelopes marked “Do Not Forward. Address Correction Requested.” Federal law prohibits delivery of such envelopes if they are improperly addressed.

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