Monthly Archives: November 2018

Culture, Legal

The Case Grinds Exceedingly Fine, And Slow

In our Village, we are seeing the end game take place between the Church and Libertyville about the disposition of a piece of Church property designated for a housing development.  Many of us feel it could have been settled with some discussion, but that’s not what’s happening.  As the saying goes, “See you in Court.”

Today was the fifth session of the Catholic Bishop of Chicago vs the Village of Libertyville case # 17MR00001013, Lake County 19th Circuit Court. Witnessing the event is a little like church, in that strange things happen up at the front, and the seats are bone hard down at the back.

Early on day 1, we watched as the opposing attorneys pushed sheaves of papers at each other, forcing the opening of massively thick three-ring binders to extract pages and replace them with others. Through it all, the judge kept a steady, grave face as he too had to change out documents in his own set of binders.  Keeping right up, he referenced exhibit numbers with the speed of a vigorous game of Whackamoley as the attorneys swapped pages before him.

After some additional scuffling about admissibility of late-arriving evidence, the attorneys finally got down to their opening statements.  For the Church, it was a clear cut case of capricious, arbitrary decision-making by the Village that infringed upon their constitutional rights.  They referenced the LaSalle Factors, which were a set of standards established by the Illinois Supreme court years ago about the rights of property owners.  At the base of it, the Church believes the LaSalle factors support them completely.  The Village decision caused the Church hardship.

For the Village, the argument throws the LaSalle Factors back at the Church.  The hardship was self-made.  Years ago, when they knew they would develop the land on Butterfield Road, they should have created a safe right of way, and they didn’t do it.

What is this debate all about?  Traffic safety, and the need for a set of lights at Lake and Butterfield.  Without those lights, and the connected access to the proposed development, it was a non-starter for the Village, which voted the project down.   For four days, the Church presented hundreds of documents testifying to the safety of the Butterfield access, and to the development process, supported by the consultants and officials who wrote them.

Now after five days and one sumptuous, turkey-laden Thanksgiving-week-long hiatus, plus a full-court snowstorm to kick things up a notch, the attorneys have returned to continue the debate before the ever-game judge.   The Village will now present the defense of their decision, again referencing their own bushel of documents testifying to the development process and to the non-safety of the access.

You may think it a simple case to sort out a simple highway safety issue, but then why would we need lawyers?

It was striking to see that there were only two attorneys for each side, but the real measure of intensity is in the volumes of paper presented.  The Church team brings in 13 bankers boxes of files every morning and spreads them across two rows of court benches.  They have two luggage carts.  There is a law clerk who is constantly running into the court bleachers to fetch another file folder.  The Village also has two luggage carts, but only about 3 boxes of files.  You can see who has the larger budget for photocopying.

The chatter in the room is between the judge and the two attorneys, while the witness gets to offer yes and no testimony.  Faithfully, diligently, the court reporter is forever typing her keys to create a transcript of thousands of lines of give and take.  It’s like recording the laying of a million bricks in an infinite wall of legalese.

Through it all, the judge is playing referee on the admissibility of every utterance.  He is patient, but not sympathetic with either side particularly.  His is not an easy task.   He is taking in mountains of detail about a subject he had no interest in, yet there he is, stuck in the middle of it.  The halting pace is interrupted by objections about admissibility, form, substance, relevance, foundation.

For instance,

Attorney 1: “Did a camel pass through the eye of a needle?”

Attorney 2: “Objection.  Foundation.”

Attorney 1: “Camel hair coats are sewn with #8 needles.  Would you agree?”

Witness: “Yes.”

Attorney 1: “Speaking of needles, did you see that camel?”

When the two sides finally close down this week, then the judge will take his numerous binders, thousands of pages, gratuitously thrust upon him, packed in his own luggage rack, and he will read everything again, and come back with a decision.

It makes me think of a parent being charged with the onerous duty to sort out a mess the kids made.

After watching these two sessions, and the grindingly slow development of the respective arguments, my advice to anyone who is at odds with another person: go figure it out.  Talk.  Find a way to avoid court.  I think the judge would agree.

This case will finish around Thursday this week.

December 1: The case has been continued to Friday, December 7, upon which day we will hear closing arguments.

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Culture, direct mail, Government, Marketing, Media, USPS

Somehow, The Mail Still Goes Through

Since we last looked, in August, the USPS has broken through another quarter, and published its latest report on Revenues, Pieces and Weights. For you marketers and mailers, here are some stats, and following that, another look at the USPS’s ironic, weird situation.

The good news: direct mail was up by 337,627,000 pieces, a 1.8% increase over Q4 a year ago.  The surge was due to the mid-term election mail, and if you are counting, in the last three months it delivered one additional piece of mail to every addressable soul living in the country.

The Princess Diamond..lost?

The bad news: full year direct mail was down 1.4%, or missing by 1,066,486,000 pieces.  In fact, the shortfall totaled 115,925 tons of mail.  That’s the equivalent of losing the Princess Cruise Lines’ Diamond, which by the way carries 2,760 passengers.  Imagine if it had gone missing.

The bright spot on the USPS horizon however is the growth of parcel delivery.  Package service mail and parcel delivery revenues are up 12% for the year, a happy indication of the robust growth of online ordering.

“Just leave it in between the doors.”

But just when you are feeling that the USPS has a rosy future in parcel delivery, be warned that companies like Amazon, Walmart and Target, the post office’s largest three customers, are now researching ways to do their own “last mile” deliveries.  Watch out, a robot may drop through your roof sometime soon.

Indeed, the parcel delivery business has its own costs, not the least of which are fuel, trucks, planes and drivers.  Did you know that there is a shortage of truck drivers?  USPS transportation costs in the past year were up 8.6% , or by $623,000,000.

Overall, the USPS reported nearly $71 billion in revenues from operations, placing it just behind Target (#39 on the Fortune 500 with $71.8B) as a business enterprise.  As the media enthusiastically reports, the post office missed its bottom line by nearly $4 billion, half of which is owing to pensions and health benefits accruals.

Which is a major source of consternation at the USPS.  Indeed much of the company’s 10K discusses the burdens of pre-funding according to federal government department rules, much different than the private sector.  As a result, it takes the expense on the books, keeps the cash, and adds it to its liabilities.  To date, the USPS must pre-fund $67 billion to employees’ and retirees’ health and pension benefit funds.

For your information, there are 497,000 career employees and 600,000 retirees to provide for. The USPS is the #3 employer in the United States, right behind Amazon, USPS #1 customer, which had 589,000 on the payroll.  The country’s top employer: Walmart, #2 USPS customer, with 2,300,000.

The bigger irony of the USPS is that it is a business, run by business people, but by government rules.  By law, it cannot make changes in products, pricing or service without federal approval.  Its wages, health and pension obligations are modeled on federal department standards.   And isn’t it rich then, that its Board of Governors is subject to Senate approval, and has been short four governors since 2014, the last time the Senate voted to approve them.  It cannot raise a quorum.

In return for federal oversight, it is granted monopoly rights to make door-to-door delivery of mail.  Only recently has its parcel service entered the competitive arena, where it is growing nicely.

Remarkably, despite the USPS financial shortfall of $4 billion, it receives no tax dollars.  Compare that to 18 Federal departments which are entirely tax-funded.  In terms of tax-funded budget, the USPS’s closest federal cousin would be the EPA with a budget of $5.7 billion….nowhere near the Departments of Education $68B, Energy $28B, Homeland Security $44B or Health & Human Services $65B.

Compared to these budgeted costs, it is distressing to see the public criticism the post office endures.    Fortunately, the White House has taken initiative to turn the situation around.

Still, the business continues to grow and manage.  Last year it added 1.2 million new addresses to its rounds, and processed 37 million address changes. It delivered, and picked up 148 billion pieces of mail, six days a week. All in, it drives and walks by 157 million addresses every day.

At a supposed cost of $4 billion, that’s not bad!

 

 

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