If you were listening to Stehly on the B-N-B show, she mentioned a resolution on the city council agenda tonight for the city to annex private property (Item#40).
This isn’t an entire neighborhood, this is just one home. Stehly said the planning department told her that the man was sent a certified letter, but out of curiosity she called the person to see if he was testifying tonight. He had no idea they were going to annex his property tonight or that it was on the agenda.
Now that’s customer service!
Kinda like waking up married in Vegas after a bachelor party.
Given that this involved annexation, why did the City not require a signature for the certified mail!?
What? He didn’t read the letter that he had to have SIGNED for. That’s the Planning Dept.’s fault?
Certified mail does not require a return signature. Registered mail requires the green card to be signed and returned.
The city of Sioux Falls has been shown in court and public testimony to not follow proof of delivery. This could be settled quick just by checking the delivery # on letter.
The certification is verification that the letter was delivered. It didn’t get lost somewhere. It got into the recipient’s control. It satisfies the requirements of the annexation laws. If the recipient decides not to read it – who’s problem is that? Really. The chronic whining is not indicative of someone who does or even can hold an unbiased perspective. The prejudice is evident.
BTW Bruce – Being sent Certified Mail doesn’t automatically assume that there is no signature collected. As a sender, you CAN add a return receipt to the process.
And further – FYI, you are out-of-date in regard to the difference between registered and certified mail. Registered mail is a category that has ONLY to do with INSURANCE for the value of the item mailed. Signatures and return receipts are PART of the Certified Mail program.
Here’s how the USPS describes it.
Certified Mail®
Prove you sent it. See when it was delivered or that a delivery attempt was made, and get the signature of the person who accepts the mailing when combined with Return Receipt.
Signature Confirmationâ„¢
Find out information about the date and time an item was delivered, or when a delivery attempt was made. Add security by requiring a signature. A delivery record is kept by USPS and available electronically or by email, upon request.
Return Receipt
Get an electronic or hardcopy delivery record showing the recipient’s signature.
https://www.usps.com/ship/insurance-extra-services.htm
Finally, I’m gonna have to go ahead and label this whole story as “fake news”.
The city is known for improper procedures. Constitutionally, they’re required to keep thorough records. They don’t. I subpoenaed information once and got a disorganized mostly irrelevant jumble of files. Courts should reprimand and fine them. They don’t. Some of the problem is the charter makes them sovereign such that they can ignore state and federal law.
Formal service is hard to do and prove. Mail is not reliable. Newspaper notice but lack of circulation. Service in person by Sheriff Deputy maybe?
Why does the City want this property and what was the outcome at last night’s Council meeting?
I got deferred so the property owner has more time to weigh his options. Starr and Stehly did try to kill it though.
Rufux: Certified Mail w/o a Return (signature) Receipt is a FLAWED indication that the mail went into the proper recipient’s control. Mail delivered to ‘common area’ mailboxes – such as in a townhome neighborhood – routinely gets into the wrong neighbor’s box. In this situation, sure – Certified is “proof” the mail carrier stuck the Certified letter into a slot on a given day/time, but it can be mis-delivered to the wrong box! If you have a neighbor who doesn’t like you, they may well not walk your Certified letter mis-delivered to their box to your front door. They can toss it in the round file, and you have no idea anything was mailed to you. A property issue this important behooves the City to properly ensure the owner is indeed notified. Hell, you have to provide a signature for a Small Claims Court Summons that may only involve a few hundred dollars. Kudos to Stehly for her follow through. A good lesson to the City in proper procedures which have gone lost in the name of “efficiency” and “progress”.
Why does the City want this property?
Blasphemo – you ASSUME that the city sent mail certified WITHOUT a signature and return receipt attached. And yet, ironically, it is the very notion of assumption (of delivery) that you rail against. Do you see yourself?
Ruf, if you watch the CC meeting, you will see that the city admits they don’t know if Metzger saw the letter, only that it was delivered.
You’re testing my memory, but I remember governmental entities requiring registered mail delivery of certain legal papers *from citizens to the government* because certified mail didn’t offer sufficient proof of delivery.
Also, please remember that postal regulations and postal offerings change over time, so options now present were not always. And government statute and regulation sometimes lag behind change in document delivery options.
So that means that they got a return receipt – the Green Card that Bruce mentioned above. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a way of confirming delivery. And that means that it was SIGNED FOR. Which gets us back to my original question – Were they supposed to go out and hold his hand while he read what he signed for?
MR. Wyland – you may remember that, but the USPO has CHANGED it’s delivery verification processes from the time that perhaps you are attempting to recall. The current processes are in my post above – taken directly from the USPO site. I know those current processes have been in place for at least 8 years – as I have used them frequently in that period. And what we are discussing here is something that would have occurred in the past 30 days.
lewis – I am not in the US currently, so I cannot watch or access ANY PART of the city’s web site(s). I inquired of them as to why, and they told me they block all access from outside the US. Nice, huh?