City to continue with home mail delivery
By Suzanne Werre, BHG News Service
The Underwood City Commission did an about-face on its proposed ordinance to prohibit home delivery of mail at its meeting last Wednesday. They instead opted to write an ordinance that requires homeowners who want home delivery to put their mailboxes on their own property, or if they want to put a mailbox on someone else’s property, they must first get permission from the property owner. City auditor Diane Schell elaborated, saying that just because someone puts a mailbox on their own property doesn’t mean they will deliver mail if that box is not on the regular route, i.e., on the side of the street that is not currently on the regular route. The commission’s original intent with writing an ordinance that would completely prohibit rural delivery in town was to bring more revenue back into the post office, thereby hopefully preventing the downsizing of the post office’s hours by two hours a day in the future. At Wednesday’s meeting, the commission heard several residents’ concerns regarding the possibility of eliminating home delivery. Commissioner Rick Olson noted that he had been thinking about an ordinance stopping home delivery for quite a while before it was brought up at a commission meeting, but because of problems with delivery during the winter and because of at least one occurrence where a resident put up a mailbox on a neighbor’s property without asking permission, and it caused quite a “squabble”.
