Uncollected mail needn’t happen

A recent letter to the editor with the title “Carrier performance harms Postal Service” needs to be “addressed.” The patron stated that he had left letters to be mailed “clipped” to his mail box “for close to a week,” and were never picked up. He called the Webster Street post office and was told, “Oh we don’t require the carriers to pick up outgoing mail, they do that as a courtesy when they deliver the mail.”

As a Kokomo mail carrier I would like to say that the patron possibly misunderstood what he heard. The only time letter carriers are not required to pick up letters to be mailed is if they have no mail to deliver to the address on that day. But most letter carriers will pick up outgoing mail anyway as a matter of professional practice and not a matter of courtesy, as the patron wrote in his letter.

The patron stated that for security reasons he rents a post office box and has his mail sent there, which means he has to go to the post office to pick it up. A letter carrier delivering the street on which the patron lives would not be inclined to observe the patron’s mail box to see if there was outgoing mail because he knows this person has the post office box. The patron stated he put the letters out “in plain sight” at 6 a.m. and left for work, leaving the letters out there all day, though he stated security reasons were why he wanted no delivery to that box!

It would have been better for the patron to just take the letters to be mailed with him to the post office when he went to pick up his mail, and mail them then instead of trying “for close to a week” to mail them from his unsecured home mail box. Also, the post office maintains numerous red, white and blue collection boxes around the city. The patron would need only to stop by one, some of which have drive-up access so that he doesn’t even have to get out of his vehicle, and drop his letters in one of them. These boxes will be collected the same day of his mailing.

Certainly this situation could have been avoided since the remedies are all in place, and there is no need for something like this to happen again. But we would like to take this opportunity to issue an apology to the valued patron for any inconvenience he may have experienced.

Jeff Hatton

Greentown

Student aid plan will cost state jobs

This letter is in regard to the proposed legislation, H.R. 3221, Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009, currently before Congress. Parts of this comment are direct excerpts from a local mayor’s letter to Sen. Evan Bayh. It is intended to help protect many Indiana jobs.

This legislation will have a direct, negative impact on one of the area’s largest employers, Sallie Mae. While Sallie Mae is located in Fishers and Muncie, it still draws staff from many counties in central Indiana. Currently, the number of Sallie Mae employees in the surrounding counties is: Madison County, 309; Delaware County, 456; Hancock, 100; Henry, 54; Grant, 19; Tipton, 11, and Hamilton, 632. These individuals rely on their jobs to support themselves and their families. In doing so, they pump tens of thousands of dollars into these counties through their taxes, utilities, shopping, recreational spending, fuel and other expenditures.

Through the legislation which would replace the origination of student loans from the private sector to the federal government, Sallie Mae employees and those of many other lending institutions, will be displaced. This creates an additional burden on the already sagging economy and welfare system – a burden that cannot be easily remedied.

I strongly urge the residents of these counties or any other Indiana resident to ask the honorable senators Evan Bayh and Richard Lugar to vote no on H.R. 3221 and to advance legislation that protects Indiana jobs. A petition is available at www.protectindianajobs.com. Our senators could potentially save many jobs across Indiana and the nation, and maintain the free enterprise on which our nation was founded.

Joe Collins

Anderson

Post 6 invites vets to Nov. 11 program

Nov. 11 is Veterans Day – a day when we honor all our veterans, past and present.

Today we have troops in all parts of the world protecting us, our families, our freedoms and our way of life.

American Legion Post 6, 2604 S. LaFountain St., Kokomo, will be holding its annual Veterans Day program at 11 a.m. Nov. 11.

We at Post 6 invite all veterans and their families (especially our young vets) to join with us in this stirring program and pay tribute to our brave troops of all eras.

We look forward to seeing you, and God bless America and its armed forces.

Larry Hedges

Kokomo