The NVSSA needs you now!

By Travis Morrow, NVSSA President

One of the major functions of a state association is to fill the roll of the legislative watch dog. Always there, monitoring lawmakers, looking for bills that may affect self storage owners and operators, and then moving quickly to educate lawmakers on self storage if a potential law has an undesired effect on the self storage industry.

The association also periodically reviews the self storage lien laws, looking for ways to improve the laws, not just for the self storage operator, but for John Q. Public as well. It is this second function that we intend to focus on during 2010 as we prepare to submit a “Technical Corrections” bill in 2011.

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The NVSSA plans to follow suit with other state associations such as Arizona who have successfully passed similar “Technical Corrections” bills. A “Technical Correction” won’t make any changes to the current law with regards to the length of time for the lien process, the numbers of letters that have to be sent, or what the letters must contain. A “Technical Correction”, if successful, will give the self storage owner operator more flexibility in how they are able to notify tenants of pending lien procedures and notify the public of upcoming auctions.

I’d like to highlight just one of changes that we will propose with the upcoming bill:

Change the mail requirement from “Certified Mail” to “Verified Mail”: In 1983 when this law was first enacted, they only way to prove that you send something in the mail was to send it certified mail. The Post Office did not offer any other available methods. In 2009, the Post Office now offers 3 to 4 different methods that allow you to prove you notified you tenant. These other methods aren’t currently available to the self storage operator because the current lien law specifies certified mail. The NVSSA will propose add the following definition to the lien law and replace the words Certified Mail with:

Verified Mail: Any method of mailing offered by the United States Postal Service that provides evidence of mailing.

Changing this one definition in our law will allow self storage owners and operators the ability to use any of these new methods of mailing offered by the Post Office now or in the future if additional methods are offered. Currently it cost $5.54 per letter to mail a Certified Letter, Return Receipt Requested. The Post Office currently has other mailing options that show evidence of mailing for as low as $0.86 per letter! An 84% savings PER LETTER.

This technical corrections bill will benefit all self storage owners and operators in the State of Nevada. This association cannot succeed in this task without the help of ALL of these same individuals. Please talk with your friends in the industry in Nevada and encourage all of them to join the NVSSA today so that we can continue pass this “Technical Corrections” bill for YOU! We won’t be able to do it without your support.

If you would like to volunteer to help in this effort, please contact Travis Morrow at tmorrow@nationalselfstorage.com.