We're the Government, Stop Bothering Us

With thanks to Fark, here's the story of an evil landlord evicting the beloved local post office because it wouldn't agree to an outrageous 500% rent increase.

At least, that's one way of looking at it. Here's another: A property owner asks its post-office tenant — in other words, the Federal Government — to discuss a rent hike. The request seems reasonable enough considering that the Feds had been virtually freeloading for almost two decades, enjoying a rent of a trifling 100 dollars a month since 1986. Over a 15-month period, the Government answers not a single one of the landlord's missives, which are now numerous enough to fill a binder. It blithely continues to send the property owner a monthly 100-dollar check and leaves it at that. With no other way to stop losing money on the building, the landlord finally feels forced to evict the uncommunicative tenant.

So, thanks to the Feds' lack of accountability — apparently they expected a small business owner to subsidize them forever — the town loses its only post office. One of the two postal clerks is terminated and the other is transferred. And the townspeople will have to do their postal business seven miles away.

When the Slones took over the property in May 2004, they asked for a rent increase to $500, but just like other business transactions, they knew they would have to negotiate.The USPS did not respond for months, Vicky said, instead choosing to ignore the request and continue to send $100 a month. In September 2004, the Slones sent the USPS the same request and, once again, it was ignored, Vicky said. A black binder at the Slone residence also shows months of correspondence they sent to the USPS since then to fix the problem."We even tried to take the case to small claims court in Pike County, but it was transferred to district court because they can't rule on postal service matters," Vicky said. "And then we learned district court couldn't help us either. We were at a standstill. As landlords, what do you do when your tenant refuses to talk to you? Don and I didn't want to terminate the lease. We live here. We know how important the post office is to people here."Finally, the Slones issued a talk, pay or get out letter for which they had no idea how the USPS would respond until they saw local media reports announcing the closure.

Comments

[LeeFranke]

Pretty sure the USPS is no longer a federal agency but I could be wrong on that.

[Richard J. Rosendall]

According to an FAQ at usps.gov, The Postal Reorganization Act in 1970 established the United States Postal Service and relinquished government control of U.S. mail. USPS began operation the following year, and at that point the Postmaster General stopped being in the Cabinet.

So USPS is what you would call a quasi-governmental agency. I presume that if they weren't at least quasi-governmental, they would not qualify for the dot gov domain name suffix.