Postal Service Clears Homeowner Leader : Inquiry Says No Laws Were Broken in Retrieval of Newsletter

Postal authorities have cleared the elderly president of a Thousand Oaks homeowners association of wrongdoing after residents had accused him of censoring their monthly newsletter, a U. S. Post Office spokesman said Friday.

A spokesman for postal inspectors in Pasadena said Friday that E. C. (Nick) Nicholides had broken no laws regulating mail service. Officials of groups that print bulk mailings are allowed to recall the material--and often do so--to correct and update information.

“We are not going any further with this based on what we know,” said Donald Obritsch, public information officer. “As an agent of an organization, he can pretty much recall mail any time he wants to.”

But the air is anything but clear at the Village Homes planned community, where angry property owners vowed Friday to call for the 81-year-old board president’s resignation unless he sufficiently explains his actions Wednesday at a meeting of the Village Homes Property Owners Assn.

“I don’t like people censoring other people’s words without their approval,” said Bill Steere, a computer company manager who has lived in the development of 687 single-family houses for 18 months. “If I don’t get adequate answers, I’m going to very strongly suggest that we research the procedure to get him recalled.”

Nicholides maintained Friday that he had done nothing wrong and declared: “The thing is all over.”

Homeowners have accused Nicholides of retrieving the July issue of the development’s monthly newsletter, the Village Voice, from the Thousand Oaks Post Office to censor letters and portions of the minutes of the June meeting. The material, which the association’s board decided to delete before the 687 newsletters were mailed again, included references critical of Nicholides, who was seeking reelection to the association’s board.

Geraldine Sanders and other homeowners who contacted the Postal Service claim that Nicholides impersonated a printer to gain access to the newsletter because he didn’t have approval from the five-member board to retrieve the material. But Obritsch said Friday that there was no proof of that.

The only apparent impropriety was that Nicholides didn’t fill out and sign the forms usually required to recall mail, Obritsch said. But, he said, that was the fault of the Thousand Oaks Post Office. Employees have been instructed to follow the correct procedure in the future, he said.

Nicholides on Friday denied any wrongdoing--including failure to complete retrieval forms. “I filled out the papers they gave me. . . ,” he said.

Nicholides said his intention had been to add a rebuttal to charges in the newsletter, not take them out.

The association board met the day after Nicholides went to the post office and voted to remove any controversial material from the July issue, in part because elections were coming up in August.