Chaffee County Can’t Seem to Get Past its Post Office Woes

If there was a saga titled “Post Office Woes,” Chaffee County might get its own chapter.

Having already had trauma related to the Buena Vista Post Office, and with the Salida Post Office reportedly losing its downtown delivery person, this time it’s the little Nathrop Post Office. Located right along U.S. 285, across the road from the Nathrop old town site, it serves the rural middle portion of the county between the town of Buena Vista and the city of Salida.

Rural Carrier, circa 1901. Image courtesy USPS.com

Rural mail is getting delivered — it’s the post office building itself that is under-delievering.

“It started in mid-September when our modem went out,” said Postmaster James Wood. “We haven’t had phone or Internet service at the Nathrop Post Office since then. So customers can’t call us. We can only do cash transactions here.”

What?” I responded, having asked for two rolls of first-class stamps. “No credit cards?”

“No, cash only,” he responded. “I’ve been pushing and pushing and they keep saying it’s on order. But we’ve gotten nothing.” Asked if he’d been in contact with our Board of County Commissioners, or possibly our U.S. Senators, Wood said no, he’d been following the system processes.

I stopped in this past Monday afternoon to pick up our mail, which had been paused while we were out of town. The Post Office door held a September 28, 2022 message saying they couldn’t do transactions at their window until October 4. But it was now October 17. I opened the door, but the service window was locked up tight. No one was around. So I went back Tuesday morning.

I asked if the apparently unscheduled and truncated hours were also the result of the lack of a modem and Wood said yes — taking credit card transactions to mail packages or getting automatically-generated receipts for things like certified mail is not possible until the modem is replaced. Unable to do business at their window, they had simply shut that down and gone on to doing the Nathrop Post Office rural mail delivery. That the situation is frustrating, said Wood, is an understatement.

“We believe in giving good customer service,” said Wood, a personable man who smiles readily, who appeared promptly when I returned Tuesday morning. “This is really so frustrating.”

Good customer service, it should be pointed out, is hard to do when 21st-century technology isn’t in place. In 2020, also an election year, there were service slowdowns and a major attempt by the Trump-appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to curtail services, especially in rural areas.  Earlier this year the U.S. Senate passed the Postal Service Reform Act (H.R.3076) The vote had overwhelming bipartisan support.

“The U.S. Postal Service is a lifeline to Coloradans, rural and urban alike,” said Senator John Hickenlooper, who celebrated the passage at the time with a video. “Modernizing USPS will ensure mail is on time for generations to come. That has our stamp of approval!”

Given that investment, exactly why a United States Post Office should be partially shut down for more than a month and counting, has not been explained.

If this sounds incredible in 2022, and even more serious because this is a general election year, readers may recall that our Mail Ballots just got released to the central Post Office for mailing. If people have questions of their local post office and you email them, they can’t get the message. If you call, they can’t answer.

On top of that is the fact area post offices are understaffed (interested people should got to http://USPS.com/careersUSPS.com/careers and look at the open positions).

Image courtesy Norton Assa Abbloy

Recent arrivals in Salida should note: if they need physical assistance accessing the Salida Post Office via the single ramp on the north side, bring patience — or a friend. The electric door opener has been broken for more than six months. And, a power-assisted door that is power-less is many times heavier than a simple push door.

Salido Post office staff reported that “parts are on order” but could not say when it might be fixed. The second door at that location is usually blocked “due to high winds.” With luck, the ADA-accessible door will be repaired before the cold and snowy weather makes a trip there even more challenging.

Featured image: Nathrop, Colorado Post Office. AVV file photo.