City Overseers discontinued immediately 9/16/11

Letter dated 09/16/11 to all BOEs about City Overseers being discontinued effective immediately.

This is from a very reliable JW anonymous source.

Wow. I'd like some more info on this! 

City Overseers???

I wasn't aware that they HAD city overseers?

Any chance we could see a scan?

Thanks in advance!

My cousin is a City Overseer...or was i guess.

why do they eliminate free labor in downsizing?  just restructure --- this gives the circuit overseers more control?

I'm surprised it took this long to eliminate the post.  My late uncle was the city overseer in Cleveland, Ohio many years ago.  I asked him what his duties were.  He told me that the work consisted mainly of following up renewals to subscriptions to The Watchtower and Awake! magazines.  The Society would send him the expiration notices that the subscribers also received.  He would then get in touch with the appropriate congregation (which was identified by a number assigned to it by the Society and was posted on the notice), telling its Service Overseer that the subscriber should be contacted about a renewal.  This was done both for publishers as well as non-Witnesses.  Since the subscription arrangement was canned years ago, there really is no need for city overseers.  They may have been assigned other things to do in the time since my uncle served, but clearly whatever they were doing is no longer necessary.

Quendi

May have 'scan' of letter tomorrow.

It was a pretty bullshit position.  

Often they handled PR business regarding conventions, news releases to local papers and such.

My question is, why?

Why eliminate this position, with all the other more significant problems with which they must be dealing? City Overseer is just another term for a local spy who can keep the CO or DO informed as to 'trends' and 'problems'. Why cut this? They don't pay anything for it. And these guys are just hoping for a big wig to wiggle a zipper so he can perform.

Just curious as to why they would bother to do this. Skeptical minds want to know.

Jeff

That is an odd development. AK, you are right they are the local snitches.  I wrote a letter to the Circuit Assembly regarding their accounting methods always being in the Red and the guilt tripping that they put the friends through because of this fake accounting method.  Boy the Letter I got back from the City Overseer could have self-ignited! I was then persona non grata in the circuit, all priviledges removed, I worked security (parking lot detail). Locally I was no longer called on for prayer or reading the Watchtower on Sundays. Every CO and DO knew who I was and Bethel did a followup.

Designs, that's really funny. I'd forgotten abut that: in both New Zealand and here in Australia the circuit assemblies always did an announcement about how much i debt they were, and (in the early days at least) I'd feel guilty and put another lot of money in the box. You're saying they had distinct accounting methods to always ensure the circuit assembly fund was always in debt? Amazing.

It was a pointless and thankless job. They did a bit of assembly admin / organising but not much else.

Mr.M- Yes they intentionally send the Wathctower more than they collect to automatically put the account in the red and force by guilt the friends to ante up more and more, its terrible. The other part, if you remember, is what they don't tell the friends ie how much the utlities cost per month, maintenence costs, rent or mortgage payments, none of it.  In my Letter I suggested they tell the friends these costs and how it averages to each Publisher in the Circuit so that everone can budget properly like you do at home. Wrong, that's not their goal, they want to leave it obscure and guilt trip people of modest means into spending more than they can afford.

I'll bet Circuit Overseers all over the world are jumping for joy! In my limited experience, the City Overseer (at least in my area) had much better connections with Bethel than the CO did and any CO that would go up against him on an issue would be overruled.

The city overseer I knew would also work with the local assembly hall and was generally a coordinator between the local circuits. There was nothing that he did that the District Overseer couldn't do.

Maybe it's part of the rumored realignment of the DO/CO job?

To me it's similar to when they got rid of Bethel Elders a few years ago. What did they really do anyway, right? So why not eliminate the position. It's one less thing for local elders to fight over.

I see....so they should of been called the Deficit Overseer, all along.

Very odd....

It seems that was a really quick decision.

Less than a month ago we got news that a new city overseer had been appointed for our city.

If they were planning to drop this for a while and were just waiting for "the right time", say the beginning of a service year, surely they would have at least stopped appointing new city overseers in the months leading up to the cutoff date.

But now there is a letter saying this is an "immediate" change? No reason was given?

Don't know for sure of course, but it sounds like a reaction to something threatening.

It is also interesting to me that this deletion was not publicized to the rank and file.  Doing so might have raised some embarrassing questions.  Since all of these positions are supposedly filled by men appointed by holy spirit, then what does their elimination mean?  Did Jehovah make a mistake?  Was the organization "running ahead" of him when it created the position in the first place?  Does the former city overseer move into some other office that will be created?  Does his removal from the position indicate some spiritual lack on his part or the office?  I'm not saying that many people would even raise these issues, but a few might.

When my uncle served as Cleveland's city overseer back in the late 1980s, he confided to me that he was given the job because he was living in retirement and could devote the needed time to it.  Nobody else wanted it.  And, as I posted earlier, his duties mainly were following through on magazine subscription renewals.  None of the other things mentioned by other posters came under his purview, for which I'm sure he was most grateful.  I have to agree with sir82 that this sudden change without any advance notice signifies some disquiet within the organization's upper echelons.  Maybe one of our Bethel "moles" can give us the real scoop on what is going on with this.

Quendi

Back when Food was served at the Circuit Assemblies (we even had an Ice Cream machine at our Assembly Hall) the City O. had some work in getting supplies together and all, but what does he do now, turn on the HVAC and stock the Bathrooms with toilet paper