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June 23, 2009

STEPHANIE SALTER: Insurance glitch temporarily closes 12 Points post office

By Stephanie Salter

TERRE HAUTE — One day from his 84th birthday, Cecil Tilford has learned to be patient. The unofficial “Mayor of 12 Points,” he discovered long ago there is always a lag — often a very long one — between the things official people promise and the promises being kept.

But this thing with the post office? This has just about depleted Mr. Tilford’s regular supply of patience, as well as his reserve tank.

Since June 1, when two U.S. Postal Service workers on a routine call came into his Lafayette Avenue variety store and postal substation — and ended up impounding all postage stamps, money orders and various official postal forms — Mr. T has been increasingly beside himself.

Customers carrying armfuls of flats, or those merely in search of a couple 2-cent stamps, must be told the bad, confusing news: “The post office is temporarily closed. It’s about a surety bond.” Many people go away grumbling, maybe forever, which scares Mr. Tilford and sends his blood pressure up where it doesn’t belong.

In the 30 years he has run the 12 Points substation — or “contract postal unit” in USPS lingo — Mr. T has had almost zero occasion to talk of insurance surety bonds. He had one, he thinks, the first two years he ran the station. And a couple of years ago he remembers a woman from USPS district headquarters in Indianapolis calling to ask if he still had one.

No, he told her, and said he didn’t need it.

“She called back in about a half-hour and said, ‘You’re right. You don’t need a bond,” Mr. T said late Tuesday afternoon.

Years passed. Then, in an Express Mail letter that arrived May 30 (a Saturday), but which Mr Tilford did not see until June 1 (a Monday), a USPS official in Indy dropped the bomb.

Richard K. Witter, retail specialist and coordinator for contract postal units, informed Mr. T that he had until the close of business June 10 “to provide an acceptable Surety Bond in the amount of $20,000 to the Postmaster, Terre Haute, Indiana.”

Until then, the letter stated, Mr. T’s “right to perform contract services and operate the Contract Postal Unit (CPU) at your business is immediately suspended.”

Worse, much worse, Witter’s letter stipulated that if the surety bond was not in the hands of the Terre Haute postmaster by the deadline, “the Contracting Officer will be requested to terminate the referenced contract.”

As a harbinger of events to come, Witter invited Mr. Tilford to “feel free to contact me with any questions you may have,” but there was no telephone number or e-mail in the letter to make that easier.

Mr. T’s loyal band of 12 Points neighbors — Amy Witherell, Rich Curtis and Jay Jones — sprang from shock into action. More than three weeks later, they say they have done everything the USPS has asked of them, but the substation of huge ZIP Code 47804 is still in lockdown mode.

The impounded stamps, money orders, forms, et al, sit wrapped in a taped packet in the safe behind Mr. T’s counter, taunting, useless. “Open it and you serve seven years in your neighborhood federal penitentiary,” said Curtis.

He, Jones and Witherell have made scores of telephone calls all over the country. They have faxed copies of checks, applications and, finally, an insurance surety bond wherever they were instructed to fax. They have personally visited the main Terre Haute post office on Margaret Avenue so many times they should have their own marked parking space.

“It’s been a tag team of people over three weeks. Cecil or any one of us alone could not have stood it,” said Jones, who owns several historic buildings in 12 Points, including the one in which Mr. Tilford’s store and CPU operate.

“We keep asking them, ‘What’s the bottom line?’ But it seems like every time we solve the bottom line, it moves,” said Witherall.

“To me, it’s been like ‘Catch-22,’” said Curtis, who owns The Old Piano Shop next door to Mr. Tilford. “We got hit with it, then it’s been non-stop, ‘Go here. No, go there. No, go here instead.’”

For example, it took almost two weeks and innumerable calls to many insurance agents just to determine what the heck an “acceptable surety bond” is. No one from the local or district post office could provide any specifics.

“There are a blue-million different surety bonds,” said Andre Maher, the Terre Haute insurance agent who finally solved the mystery last week. “I’ve done a lot of bonds, but I didn’t know such a beast as a ‘postal substation surety bond’ existed. I Googled and searched but couldn’t find what they needed.”

Maher turned to an associate in South Bend. After days of research, the beast was identified and obtained for about $300. Then, the “pretty laborious” process of submitting the bond began.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a small one for $20,000 or for $20 million, a bond is treated with the same careful protocol — background checks, financials; it takes awhile,” Maher said.

Last Friday, Mr. T’s bond was done and submitted, by Witherell’s hand, to the Margaret Avenue facility. She said she was told it would be faxed to Indianapolis and all would be well by Monday.

“That didn’t happen,” Witherell said, Tuesday.

Actually, Witter did get the bond — and it has been passed on to a contracting company in Colorado that does all bond approvals for the U.S. Postal Service.

According to Kim Yates, who handles corporate communications for the Indy USPS office, “We don’t imagine that [approval] would take a long time, but I can’t say it will be this day or in two days or by the end of the week … If there is something wrong, they [in Colorado] will point out what needs to be corrected.”

Far from bloodless bureaucrats, Yates and Witter seem to be concerned folks who want to see Mr. T’s busy CPU again serving 47804. Witter, in fact, gladly extended the June 10 deadline by a week when everyone was scrambling for the precise identity of the acceptable surety bond.

By phone Tuesday, Witter said he needed to leave official comment to Yates, but he did say of Mr. Tilford, “We want to get him open and running as soon as we can.”

Yates concurred. “Our contract units are very important to us,” she said, explaining that CPUs usually serve areas like 12 Points in which customers have little access to USPS offices.

“Our goal is going to be to make it work so he can get back in business,” Yates said.

Behind the counter in his way-too-quiet variety store/CPU, Mr. Tilford said Tuesday he was somewhat cheered to hear what Yates and Witter had said.

“I’m 80 to 90 percent thinking that this will be OK,” he said, but he added that he liked things a lot better in days gone by.

“Used to be, if you had a problem, you called your local postmaster, and it was solved,” he said. “Now, I’m talking to people in Arizona who wouldn’t know that 47804 goes from the river to Fruitridge and Fort Harrison to Eighth Avenue. They have no idea how important 47804 is.”



Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.

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