County commission asked to return to old mail policy

At the Hill County Commission’s weekly business meeting Thursday county officials and Havre Postmaster Dwayne Tedrick requested that the county return to its old system of mail delivery to various departments, a request the commissioners agreed to have more meetings about.

Under current policy, certified and/or registered mail, with the exception of that addressed to the county attorney’s office, which must be hand-delivered, needs to be signed for and picked up at the post office by a commissioner, or a representative of the commission, to be distributed to the correct departments, a system Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson said was implemented at the request of then-Hill County Attorney Karen Alley.

Peterson said Alley came to him with concerns about mail addressed to Hill County without specifying a person or department being signed for or opened, which can create legal complications for her department and the policy was changed.

“That’s what I was told to do, so I did it,” Peterson said.

Before that, all mail to the county would be signed for at the county’s mail room and distributed there after, a system Tedrick, Hill County Clerk and Recorder Sue Armstong and Hill County Treasurer Sandy Brown said was much more efficient and worked perfectly for decades.

Armstrong said her department deals with time-sensitive documents and the current policy has the potential to make complications for her as well as other departments due to the delay it causes between mail being delivered to the post office and the departments actually getting it.

She said the operator of the mail room has the legal right to sign for certified and registered mail including that which isn’t addressed to a specific department and they need to be trusted to do that.

Brown said it is also a system that imposes significant inconvenience on the post office and its mail carrier, who need to go out of their way to accommodate the courthouse.

Tedrick said mail carriers are closely tracked and due to how USPS’ technology works, the one serving the courthouse has the potential to get in trouble with people over Tedrick’s head for no fault of their own.

He said each piece of certified mail now needs to have an individual form filled out, when before the mail room could just sign for all, and this creates a significant amount of work for the carrier, who has very little time to spare.

Hill County Commissioner Diane McLean said a decision probably can’t be made at this meeting due to the lack of specificity with which it was put on the agenda.

Peterson said the current system is in place at the request of Hill County’s previous attorney and said the decision should be up to its new county attorney Lacey Lincoln.

He said he’s not opposed to change but the decision should be made with everyone’s input.

Armstrong and Brown agreed that more input is needed, and the former said that standard was not applied to the initial decision to change policy, which department heads were sent an email about after the fact without chance of input.

The commissioners agreed to hold further meetings on the subject.

Tedrick urged them to do it sooner rather than later because he would be unavailable for most of April and the issue is one that really needs to be looked at, an evaluation Hill County Commissioner Jake Strissel agreed with.