Over the course of a year, Camillus Town Clerk Martha Dickson-McMahon handles about 50,000 pieces of mail. It’s for this reason that she felt the town should lease a new digital mailing system to replace the old.
The board approved the lease for the machine at a price of $1,130.76 per quarter over 63 months at the Aug. 24 town board meeting. Councilors Salinger, Kolinksi, Callahan and Davern, and Supervisor Coogan voted in favor of the lease. Councilors Philippone and Griffo voted in opposition.
While the current machine’s lease is not up until February, the town will save money by going with the upgraded mailing system.
“Our current vendor extended an offer that would save us money, supply us with a similar yet updated digital mailing system machine, and keep our business with a local company we’ve had a good business relationship with,” said Councilor Davern. He added that any competing quote would have to include the buyout cost of the current lease of $6,356.37.
Davern recalled bringing around 200 pieces of mail to the town office to find that the machine was under repair. The digital mailing system, also known as a dynamic scale, weighs and measures postage and stamps it accordingly.
Councilor Philippone felt the town could have benefited from weighing its options.
“One way to look at this is you have a guy who wants to lock you down for 63 months, but if you go to a competitor you might be able to save a lot more than that,” he said. Philippone questioned the vendor’s limited-time offer:
“I assume if you can do this for us now, why does the offer disappear?”
Dickson-McMahon said based on the amount of postage coming through her office, postage assessments have always recommended the town use a dynamic scale.
“You’re going to pay for it in the equipment or the labor,” she said. “I ran the numbers and the labor was a lot more expensive when you consider the hourly wage of the administrative personnel.”
