The District wants your wool socks.

Grace J. Han Stanton, esq.

July 8, 2007

Dear Grace,

Thank you for your letter dated July 6, 2007. My response follows.

It is my understanding that all District-related imagery and documentation, created or coordinated while employed by the Edmonds School District, has been deleted from my server.

Regarding your second issue, I am more than a little disturbed by your choice of words to quote from my previous letter. The portion you selected ("reduce the amount of time") appears to suggest that I was interested in saving my supervisor's breath and not the real purpose for registering the domain. I was interested in protecting my ears, and the ears of my co-workers. "With all of the calls being received, it made personal sense to shorten the address and reduce the amount of time spent filling our work environment with background noise." If the District decided to expend funds in keeping the administration building a chilly 62 degrees, I would have worn a sweater to work, or perhaps wool socks. Such a measure would have been taken to protect myself from being cold or getting sick.

Your argument opens another topic worthy of being mentioned at this time. During my first several years of employment with the District, I seldom submitted mileage reimbursements for the District's use of my truck. I frequently moved cubicle panels, boxes, parts and pieces from one District site to another. One could naturally conclude that the absence of mileage reimbursements would suggest that my vehicle actually belongs to the District. Am I to expect the District will be making a claim for its title? Perhaps the mistake in all of this was in not charging the District for use of my domain in advertising the properties they had available, because somehow the absence of a bill encouraged the beneficiary to assume ownership.

"Ms. Miller believed the District was listed as the owner of the domain name" reveals that she is either totally detached from web development at the District or choosing to abandon the memory of unfavorable conversations. I notified the District Web Content Specialist prior to registering the domain and then immediately after doing so. District staff was aware that I registered the domain and that I controlled its use. I was reminded frequently that the registration and use of esd15.org was nothing the District wanted at the time or was interested in obtaining at some date in the future. My registration of the domain was viewed as a nuisance. If I registered the domain on behalf of the District, why would anyone oppose its existence or consider the act of doing so to be something unacceptable?

Believing something to be true does not actually make it true. If that was the case, the world would be an entirely different place and we wouldn't be exchanging these letters.

I look forward to your response.

Mark Zandberg