Mt. Crested Butte ends P.O. discussion

Delivery might go to the Performing Arts Center, when it’s built

The discussion about finding a place to put postal boxes in Mt. Crested Butte in the near future is over, at least as far as the Town Council and the U.S. Postal Service are concerned.

In response to recent correspondence on the issue, nearly every council member spoke up at a meeting on Tuesday, March 1 to say they’d heard enough and weren’t going to pursue the idea anymore.
And that was enough to make Jim Sharpe, a charter member of the group Citizens for Postal Delivery in Mt. Crested Butte, nearly go, well, postal. He couldn’t understand why the council was closing the door on considering a permanent location for the boxes outside of the envisioned Mt. Crested Butte Performing Arts Center (MCBPAC), which won’t be built anytime this year.
In a letter to the Mt. Crested Butte Town Council, Sharpe and Anita Puglisi, speaking for themselves and “other Mt. Crested Butte full- and part-time residents,” gave the council two options to consider: figure out a place to put mailboxes this year or “write us a letter stating that the town of Mt. Crested Butte is not capable of finding any solution that would guarantee us postal delivery within 4 years of our last formal request (which was now nearly a year ago).”
The council unanimously, and vocally, supplied Sharpe and Puglisi with the latter, without the formality of sending a letter.
First, councilman David O’Reilly thanked town manager Joe Fitzpatrick for spending so much time looking into the matter over the last six months. He also pointed out that the manager for post office operations in the Colorado/Wyoming district, Walter S. McBain, who would need to approve delivery to Mt. Crested Butte, was a pretty busy person and had already spoken once on the matter.
In his letter to the council, McBain wrote, “I want to reiterate that the USPS will not approve an interim location for delivery to Mt. Crested Butte residents… The only time temporary delivery is established is when there have been previous delivery arrangements that are discontinued temporarily and a timeframe is established to resume normal delivery.”
But that didn’t happen in Mt. Crested Butte after postal service to the zip code 81225 was suspended in the 1990s. And the council has said it intends to put post office boxes in the Performing Arts Center as a way of developing the space as a central, civic building in town.
McBain seemed open to the idea, saying in his letter that the town should contact the Crested Butte post office when they’re “closer to finalizing the permanent location of a centralized delivery point,” so they can “proceed with the applications and necessary approvals for this possible delivery point.”
To Sharpe, who attended the meeting and questioned whether the MCBPAC will be built at all, McBain’s comment was an opportunity to find a permanent location soon outside the MCBPAC. “In order to honor Walter [McBain]’s suggestion, could you not choose a different permanent location?” he asked, with some frustration.
Mt. Crested Butte mayor William Buck—who reiterated the intention to put postal boxes in the MCBPAC—responded to the group’s letter: “I do not think it is in the town’s best interests to make guarantees of if and when this postal service delivery location will be established and I do think the town has acted in good faith… I think we’ve extended quite a bit of time and effort on this issue and I for one am ready to move on.”
Council members Andrew Gitin, Gary Keiser, David Clayton and Danny D’Aquila all agreed that the order to abandon the idea of an interim location had been made and that the town’s staff had spent enough time on the issue. D’Aquila would rather see the effort and money that’s been expended on postal boxes so far be redirected to funding and building the MCBPAC.
When Sharpe took the podium to make his comments, he wondered why the focus is on putting the postal boxes in the MCBPAC, why the town is delaying a postal solution and why the boxes couldn’t be located in proposed North Village, since the unrealized development is just as much a reality as the MCBPAC.
Buck said the council wouldn’t be responding to questions at the meeting, but recommended Sharpe put his comments in the form of a letter, “or you could send us an email,” he said. “We have discussed your questions over the last year and prior to that, of course. So I’ll ask you to present us with a list of questions, but it’s not open for discussion.”
Sharpe said he’s “asked these questions to you before in writing and I still haven’t heard an answer… Why won’t you allow us to get this service on the mountain? We’ve been asking year after year after year for a solution. What we got was another stall tactic.”
Buck interrupted, saying the meeting wasn’t a public hearing and that the council had concluded its discussion of the matter. As he asked the council for a motion, Sharpe left the podium, saying, “I can’t believe these people.” Visibly frustrated, Sharpe grabbed his coat before apologizing for his interruption as Buck said, “We’re going to proceed with the plan at hand.” As he walked out the door, Sharpe shouted, “There is no plan, it’s a stall.”
Without hesitation, Buck said, “The next item under new business…”