Vail to mail letter seeking housing, world-class post office, as USPS rule targets mail-in voting
David O. Williams/Vail Daily
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” may not, in fact, be the official motto of the U.S. Postal Service, but for a century or two it has served as inspiration for postal workers nationwide.
In Vail, at the post office named after former local and President Gerald R. Ford, you could easily add a few other hurdles to mail delivery in the mountains such as broken doors and windows and potholes so deep the building’s driveway could at times double as an unpaid four-wheel-drive Jeep tour.
In recent years, besides the physical state of post offices themselves, there have been growing complaints about slowed delivery times, lost mail and a shortage of staffing at facilities many mountain residents rely on due to a lack of home delivery. In Vail, a door broken off its hinges for months was recently fixed, but town officials are hoping for more substantial improvements.
This week, a draft letter from Vail Mayor Barry Davis to U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General David Steiner will be presented to the full Vail Town Council at Tuesday’s afternoon meeting for feedback before being popped in the mail.
Vail Housing Director Jason Dietz, in a memo on the process, explains the purpose of the letter is the “initiation of conversations to explore potential mutually beneficial partnership opportunities regarding the USPS parcel and community housing possibilities.”
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Conversations with the USPS regarding the possibility of redeveloping the Vail Post Office to include community housing for local workers while improving the local post office itself have been going on for years. This time, however, there seems to be growing momentum to get something done, with Colorado’s federal lawmakers pushing hard on the issue.
In Vail, the massive facility was built as a regional processing center but no longer serves that purpose. And much of Vail’s mail is delivered to neighborhood cluster boxes. Vail officials would love to right-size the post office while building more community housing for local residents and employees, including postal workers.
“Any potential redevelopment opportunity is likely to not only result in new, state-of-the-art facilities for the Postal Service, but also achieve a shared objective of providing affordable homes for Postal Service employees,” the draft letter reads.
Reached by phone, Mayor Davis was not interested in rehashing well-documented facility problems such as a broken windows and potholes that have taken months to get repaired. Instead, he called redevelopment of the post office “a real opportunity that of course we should explore,” and added there is “room for improvement of the guest experience.”
Davis agreed the current Vail Post Office is built “on so much more land than the post office needs” because it no longer serves that regional processing purpose, and he added that, “We’re Vail. We could have a world-class post office for people to send their postcards from.”
At the other end of the Eagle River Valley, the more-populous town of Gypsum has the opposite problem with a post office that’s too small, in need of repairs and expansion and was slated for relocation until those efforts “inexplicably” stalled at the federal level. Colorado’s federal lawmakers are seeking answers with regard to the Gypsum Post Office as well.
Impacts to local mail-in voting?
On Friday, states such as Colorado where mail-in voting has become the norm raised alarms when the U.S. Postal Service announced a new rule requiring a federal voting list and prohibiting USPS mailing of ballots to anyone not on that list. The rule will be published for comment on Tuesday.
Asked if any issues with the local post offices or the new rule itself should worry Eagle County voters ahead of the June 30 primary or Nov. 3 general elections, Eagle County Clerk and Recorder Becky Close responded in an email: “The Constitution is clear, states determine the manner by which elections are administered, and nothing has changed in Colorado as far as how ballots are mailed, returned, or counted.”
Ballots for the June 30 primary will be mailed the week of June 8, and UOCAVA (Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act) ballots have already been deployed. Close added that she has full faith in the local post masters.
“In Eagle County, we maintain great open communication with all of our post masters, and appreciate the work they do to support election integrity,” Close said. “If residents have concerns about returning their ballots via USPS, they can return them using any of our secure 24-hour drop boxes or visit a vote center and use the internal drop box.”
In-person vote centers with drop boxes will be up and running in Eagle at the Eagle County Building, 500 Broadway; in Edwards at the new Eagle County Commons building, 410 Miller Ranch Road; in El Jebel at the Eagle County Community Center, 20 Eagle County Drive; and in Vail at the Vail Grand View Room in the Lionshead Parking Structure, 395 S. Frontage Road.
To ensure the mailing of a ballot, confirm voter registration, residential address and mailing address, go to GoVoteColorado.gov, and for more information on the Eagle County election process, visit http://www.eaglecounty.us/vote.
