The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“A longstanding issue that continues to create significant challenges for our residents, businesses, visitors and local government”
by Kendra Walker
In an effort to alleviate the ongoing post office woes in the north valley, the Mt. Crested Butte town council recently sent several letters to the United States Postal Service. The letters address the operational strains at the Crested Butte Post Office as well as the failure of USPS and third-party systems to accurately recognize Mt. Crested Butte’s municipal zip code, 81225.
The first letter discusses the recurring operational concerns at the post office, including staffing shortages, the recent discontinuation of local package delivery service, increased customer wait times and the need for a long-term operational plan. The letter requests permanent reinstatement of the local package delivery program, additional information regarding USPS’s plans for staffing and service improvements and designated point of contact for ongoing coordination with the local governments.
“We also understand that USPS has recently provided temporary staffing assistance and resumed some package delivery operations to address the immediate concerns. While we appreciate these efforts, temporary measures do not provide the certainty or stability our community needs,” the letter states. “Recent communications between local officials and USPS indicate that additional staffing and parcel delivery have helped alleviate some of the immediate service issues, but no long-term operational plan has been provided.”
The other two letters address the town’s longstanding concerns regarding the recognition of its 81225 zip code and municipal identity within USPS. The letter requests that USPS review how Mt. Crested Butte is represented in its addressing products and identify measures that could improve recognition by retailers, carriers, payment processors and other third-party users of USPS address data.
“Despite having a unique ZIP code, many address verification systems utilized by retailers, shipping companies, online marketplaces, payment processors and third-party data providers do not consistently recognize ‘Mt. Crested Butte, CO 81225’ as a valid city designation. Instead, addresses located within Mt. Crested Butte are frequently converted, standardized or defaulted to another jurisdiction during the address validation process,” the letter reads.
“As commerce continues to shift toward online transactions, municipal sales tax collection increasingly relies upon automated address verification and jurisdictional mapping systems. When Mt. Crested Butte addresses are incorrectly identified as being located outside the Town, there is a substantial risk that sales tax revenues generated within Mt. Crested Butte may be improperly attributed to another jurisdiction. Local businesses, residents, property owners and visitors routinely encounter difficulties when creating customer accounts, processing deliveries, obtaining services, or validating addresses online because many systems fail to recognize Mt. Crested Butte as a valid destination.”
During the council’s July 21 meeting, town clerk Tiffany O’Connell also noted this issue results in 911 often sending first responders to the wrong area.
The council reiterated the challenges for Mt. CB residents when filling out their delivery addresses, which often result in online checkout failures, delayed deliveries and mix-ups at the post office. “Some people get really frustrated and just input 81224,” said mayor Nicholas Kempin. “They just want to get their stuff.”
“Do we have an estimate on our tax revenue loss?” asked council member Steve Morris.
“It would be impossible [to track],” said O’Connell.
O’Connell explained that there is zip code coalition advocacy group for other jurisdictions similar to Mt. Crested Butte working on getting a zip code bill in front of the Senate, which would assign unique, dedicated ZIP codes to specific growing communities that currently share or lack individual codes.
While Mt. CB already has its own dedicated zip code, O’Connell noted this is an additional avenue to address the post office shortcomings. “There are still multiple steps and it’s an uphill battle,” she said. “It’s bringing attention to our congressmen and senators that we’ve got this problem and it’s not going away.”
