Residents of a growing subdivision in Truesdale have been struggling over the last year to get something they say the U.S. Postal Service promised them: mailboxes outside every home.It’s a basic service that many homeowners might take for granted, having a mailbox at the end of the driveway. But residents of the Heritage Hills subdivision stop for their mail at the subdivision entrance. An assortment of mismatched mailboxes are lined up along the short drive between Veterans Memorial Parkway and the circular road that will eventually serve around 100 homes.“It’s ridiculous,” said resident Jaime Strauss. “When you come in from work, more people are coming in around the same time, between 4 (o’clock) and 6. And when you come off of the service road, you’re pulling in, and there is a line of cars stopped right there to get their mail.”Strauss said the entrance road itself is narrow, making it difficult to get around the mailbox traffic. She said the situation is potentially dangerous for people checking their mail.“It’s a huge accident waiting to happen,” she said.Homeowners also have concerns about the security of their mail, she said, because the mailboxes are all grouped together away from any of the homes and close to Veterans Memorial Parkway, making them difficult to monitor.Packages, meanwhile, are delivered door-to-door by mail carriers.Homeowners didn’t expect this mailbox situation to be permanent when they moved in, Strauss said. Her house was the first one built in the subdivision in 2007. At the time, she said the post office told her that when 50 percent of the homes are built, every house would get its own mailbox.Because of the 2008 housing collapse, there were only a few homes in the subdivision for years. When building started picking up again several years ago, newer residents say they were told the same as Strauss: That they would eventually get mailboxes outside their homes.But in 2013, the U.S. postal service began phasing in a policy that all new subdivisions would have their mail delivered to one or more centralized locations. Usually that means a large cluster box unit, the same type of box units that serve some apartment buildings.“We’ve gone to that because it saves us a lot of money,” said Postal Service representative Mike Cooke. The change is response to significant financial struggles faced by the postal service, he explained.Curbside delivery costs $270 per year for each address, Cooke said, but because cluster box units save time, they reduce that cost to $193 per year. For a subdivision with 100 homes, as Heritage Hills is planned to be, that represents a difference of $7,700 per year.The cluster box policy doesn’t apply to existing homes; no one is being forced to give up their mailbox, Cooke said. It will only apply to new subdivision developments, and that appears to be how Heritage Hills has been classified.Among the residents upset by the change is Truesdale Alderman Mike Thomas. He said midway through 2017 was the first time he and others were told about the plans for the cluster box unit, and that they would not be getting permanent, individual mailboxes.Thomas said Heritage Hills shouldn’t be subject to the cluster box policy, since the subdivision began construction in 2007, before the change was made.Thomas, Truesdale government staff and the offices of several state and national elected officials are currently in talks with the postal service to resolve the dispute.“We’re just wanting them to abide by what was in place when this subdivision was started,” Thomas said. “From here on out, if they want (cluster box units) in subdivisions that are new, so be it. ... But don’t change the rules in the middle of the game.”Going forward, the city of Truesdale will inform all new subdivision developers that the postal service requires cluster mailboxes rather than individual boxes, City Administrator MaryLou Rainwater said. But she said in the case of Heritage Hills, the city wasn’t informed about the postal service’s policy change until it recently became an issue.“How can I know what the post office expects if nobody ever contacts us?” she asked.Although additional meetings with regional U.S. Postal Service representatives are expected, no date or location has been set. Thomas said residents have yet to be satisfied by the postal service’s response.

A line of mailboxes at the entrance of the Heritage Hills subdivision in Truesdale serves almost 50 homes. The entrance road is accessed from Veterans Memorial Parkway. Residents of the subdivision say they were promised that mailboxes would eventually be moved in front of each home, but now are told one large box unit at the entrance will serve all homes. 

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