Bad economy has Kane County going postal

Kane County is one of the leading deliverers of bad news in an economic recession. And delivering more bad news than ever is taking a toll on county coffers.

A few weeks ago, a memo went out from Jim Mitchell, chairman of the county board's Administration Committee, to all county departments letting them know that numbers indicate postage costs for the county were increasing at an out-of-control rate.

In fact, postage costs increased by 30 percent from 2007 to 2008 alone, according to Mitchell's memo.

"I recognize postage is a vital function, but experiencing an approximate $150,000 annual increase is very difficult to absorb," Mitchell wrote.

He and the committee wanted answers. On Friday, he got them.

The first part of the answer is that the county sends out a heck of a lot more mail than it did just a few years ago. In 2006, the county paid for postage on 832,413 pieces of mail. Last year, it was 1.4 million pieces.

That, combined with postal rate increases, fuels the skyrocketing postal costs the county pays to conduct its business.

Many of those mailings are mandated by law, such as property assessment notices. The more parcels in the county, or the more that need reassessment, the larger the increase in the amount of mail. Last year, the assessor's office mailed out nearly 57,000 more assessments than in 2006.

The county also mailed descriptions of all the property tax exemptions for which Kane County residents may qualify, resulting in the largest ever amount exemption applications, and the largest ever amount of abatement checks the county had to issue.

The inability of some to pay their debts to society is another reason postage costs have gone haywire, officials said.

The Kane County State's Attorney's Office last year nearly tripled its mail output by sending out notices to people who were delinquent on their court fees and fines.

Those mailings generated more than $105,000 of revenue, but that was offset, in part, by the costs of hiring a collection agency to track down the delinquents and a $30,000 increase in postage.

The Kane County Sheriff's office expects to mail at least 1,000 more pieces of mail than the 25,000 pieces it sent out last year. Foreclosure notices accounted for about 3,000 of those letters.

County staff promised to keep elected officials apprised as postage budgets near their limits for this year.