How to Save $32,000: Good-bye Mail

Browsing through Newburyport’s fiscal 2009 budget, I noticed city leaders approved spending $32,800 on general administrative postage. This expense, along with a $3,000 annual lease for a postage machine, is predominantly used to send residents real estate and personal property tax bills.

While municipally-paid postal mail is also used for constituent responses, legal correspondence, and the like, it’s fair to assume that if the city had less households there would likely be less outbound mail.

But here’s the kicker: As of the spring of 2008, city residents can pay tax bills online. So, why is the city sending mail?

At a time when Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick proposes reducing local aid by $500 million over fiscal 2009 and 2010, forcing cities and towns to react by cutting services and laying off employees, I look at current budget expenses such as mailing out tax bills and suggest creative responses.

For instance, can’t the Newburyport treasurer’s office run a direct marketing campaign in cahoots with the local newspapers and radio and TV stations, asking residents for their email addresses? The bills can be sent by email and the taxes paid online. Make that happen and you have almost $40,000 (including the machine) that’s now a savings.

Forget the pundits who think the Post Office is dead. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong.

The point remains that hard times call for new ways of thinking–which includes challenging the status quo.

I challenge Newburyport leaders to challenge the status quo. The City Council could take the lead, by bringing their laptops (or borrowing others from family members and friends) to biweekly meetings and thereby saving the unnecessary printing costs of paper agendas and committee reports.

Photo credit: jlt

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Tagged as: Civic Engagement, finance, Government

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