May 11th, 2008

COLUMNIST MAY NEVER GET MAIL AGAIN

It can be fun to slam the federal government. Easy, too, since big government lives somewhere else and is faceless, except for whoever happens to be in the White House at the moment.

Politicians actually encourage us to blame “the gummint” for stuff like high gas prices, although I’m not sure that’s what they mean to do. One party blames the other party and promises to do something about it “when we’re in office”, but they know they can’t.

Gas prices are solely a result of supply and demand, plus taxes, which are necessary to keep building and re-building the nation’s roads and bridges. No matter who’s elected, prices will still react to market forces with minimum government interference, but now the politicians will blame ‘big oil’ for making a billion dollar profit.

The oil companies are big because it takes a lot of money to get oil out of the ground. That’s reflected in what we pay for it, but while a billion bucks sounds like a lot and is a lot, it’s an acceptable and normal profit for the billions and billions ‘big oil’ must bring in to cover the cost of doing business.

Faceless federals make easy targets. You know that they don’t know where you live. But local politicians have a face and if you target them, they might arrange for the garbage truck to skip your house.

Oops, almost forgot about the post office, you might see the counter clerks often, if you’ve got a PO Box. Especially if you’re one of the 300 or so people, including me, who were recently locked out of their boxes at the main PO building downtown.

The faceless federals decided that the terrorism fight required anybody receiving mail at a P.O. Box to bring two pieces of identification to them. No ID? No mail.

So after almost 30 years, I’m about to let the P.O. have their box back. I’ve got enough ID pieces, of course, but property management companies often get mail addressed to Mr. Rental House Owner at their PO Box as part of the management business. A lot of it is junk mail and credit card applications, but it can also include things like insurance bills and mortgage coupons.

It’s a bad idea to have insurance bills sent back, real estate needs insurance and not having it greatly excites the lender, since the real estate is security for the loan.

Just have them change the address to “in care of”, the postal clerk said. Right, that’ll work. I can’t even get lenders to consistently post mortgage payments to the right account. And big insurance companies like State Farm have a lot of moving parts that don’t always talk to each other.

“Can I speak to Mr. Farm, please; I need to change an address.” Oh, but that’s handled by another department, maybe the one in California or Rhode Island. And you’ll have to ask the owner to call, nobody else can request changes.

Owners use management companies because they’re stationed in neighborhoods in Japan, Germany or even Saudi Arabia, which is a seriously long distance call through multiple operators who don’t always speak good English and may not like Americans.

The irony is that you can send cannonballs to Attila the Hun at my street address, no problem, but can’t send insurance bills to a property owner without the PO knowing who they are.

We can’t help it, it’s the law, said the faces at the PO, so you run along now and have the 150 people likely to get insurance bills come on down here with two forms of ID. And that was it, next customer, please.

What I wanted to hear was “I can see your problem, it’s unfortunate, but you can do this and this and this, which should make a smooth change to street mail to make sure you don’t miss any insurance bills.”

That didn’t happen. I finally wormed this and this out of them, but it took several extra trips to the PO to do it, because they didn’t tell me everything I needed to bring the first time. Or second time, either.

That’s OK, I like standing in line watching folk’s blood pressure go up.

Just my opinion, of course, but I don’t see much difference between PO counter work and fast food counter work, except the worst fast food employee is probably faster and more customer oriented than the best PO counter person. And the fast food person is getting no benefits, no holidays, no retirement and only a fraction of the salary.

But enough whining, let me balance this tirade with a warm and fuzzy story.

The tiny Valdosta–Lowndes Property Manager’s Association beat the big boys like Georgia Power and SAFT in raising money for American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life last week. For the seventh straight time.

Since 2001, the small manager’s group has prepared and sold chicken dinner plates, Boston butts and this year, 225 smoked turkeys. They’ve staged silent auctions and managers put together fancy baskets and baked goods to be raffled and sold at the Valdosta Middle School track, all put together by friends and family.

The manager’s association raised close to $18,000 for Relay for Life in 2006 and has been recognized every year since then for the most money raised and for the smallest group to bring in the most money.

“Part of property management is asking for rent,” said Association President Ginsie Degange, “so we’re not afraid to ask for anything that will help Relay for Life.” And ask they did, making rounds of local businesses for donations to sell, auction and raffle and twisting the arms of friends, family, tenants and their bosses, many of whom allowed them to work on the project during business hours.

They also get help from the Moody Air Force Base Off-Housing Office.

“They’ve all been very, very generous,” she said, “we really appreciate that, we couldn’t do it without them and since we’ve all had family and friends who’ve been affected by cancer, we feel a responsibility to do everything possible to prevent it and to support those who’ve experienced it.”

She said about a half-dozen managers usually stay all night at each year’s event, providing food for walkers, friends and family and swapping management war stories.

Some of us aren’t as young as we once were,” she said, “so we pay for it the next day. But it’s a good cause and truly inspirational and when the sun comes up the next morning, it’s worth it.”

I agree, but I’ll make extra donations before I’ll sleep on the ground again.

e Hill has been in the real estate business in Valdosta since 1976 and may never get mail in this town again.