Residents in the 1600 and 1700 blocks of Second Street in Perry have gone without home mail delivery for six months, and a dispute between the city of Perry and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) over the design of new mailboxes for the neighborhood is likely to extend the interruption.
The post office decided to make some changes after a letter carrier was bitten April 7 by a dog running at large. The Perry Police Department issued a citation to the dog’s owner for first-offense vicious dog, but a second bite incident occurred June 1 involving the same dog.
“We have a dog problem,” said Perry’s UPSP Postmaster Janelle Hall. “There’s been three just since this whole thing started.”
The original remedy, proposed by the USPS and agreed to by the city of Perry, involved placing a cluster box unit (CBU) in each block.
“We were going to put up CBUs,” Hall said, “you know, those cluster boxes, one on each end of each block, and the city was okay with that. Then we had a problem with another dog where one of the CBUs was going to be located. I couldn’t ask my carrier to get out and deliver the CBU with a dog problem at that address.”
Perry Public Works Director Jack Butler, who met with Hall in June and agreed to the placement of the CBUs on Second Street, said he was surprised when he saw what the post office started building instead of the expected CBUs.
“They told us they were going to put up something nice,” Butler said, “and then in turn they didn’t. They put up these . . . I call them hitching posts.”
The post office began the preliminary installation of what are called mounted boxes, basically a row of rural-style mailboxes mounted on a horizontal plank that rests on one or two legs. The boxes permit the mail carrier to deliver the mail without exiting the USPS vehicle.
“We just wanted something that looked nice, with nice curb appeal,” Butler said, “but they’re throwing up something that if you Google ‘trailer park mailboxes,’ that’s exactly what they’re going to look like, and that’s no joke.”
Butler said the city was also concerned about the durability of mounted boxes.
“The first time you run by that thing with a snow plow, and the snow flies off of it, however many mailboxes they mount up on there are gone,” he said.
David Roberts of Ogden, a 31-year veteran of the Perry Post Office, said he did not find the city’s objections persuasive.
“We have hundreds of mailboxes like that all around town that don’t hardly ever get knocked down,” Roberts said. “This is brand new wood. We put them in concrete. They’re metal boxes. They’re well put together, but Jack said it looks like trash. It looks a little too Southern. Those were his exact words.”
Perry City Administrator Sven Peterson said he shared Butler’s concerns about the appearance and durability of the mounted boxes.
“Our concern was with the appearance of the neighborhood,” Peterson said, “and during the snow season, we have issues with snow in the mailboxes. When we’re going down the road, that snow comes off the blade kind of fast, especially when it’s wet, and can take out mailboxes, so we didn’t want these mailboxes. We wanted the nice, solid CBUs that have a little more curb appeal in the neighborhood.”
The Perry City Attorney and a USPS attorney are now handling communications on the issue.
“Basically, the post office is going to do what the heck they want,” Butler said. “They don’t have to have our permission because they’re the federal government, but we barked and said, ‘Hey, this isn’t what you told us you were going to do,’ so they ended up getting their lawyers involved.”
In the meantime, house dwellers along Second Street have not gotten home delivery of their mail since April. Jesse Quijas, who lives in the 1700 block of Second Street, said talk around the neighborhood focused on a pair of dog attacks but so far as he knew, “the people who had the dog that supposedly did it moved away months ago.”
Even though the vicious dog and its owners have moved on, the USPS plan for mounted boxes is going forward.
“We’ve already started the process,” Hall said, “and that’s why we’re not able to revert back to street delivery. Everybody says, ‘If the problem’s gone, why can’t you just deliver?” Well, it doesn’t work like that.”
Quijas said the durability of mounted boxes is not a concern to him.
“Everyone is saying the city is upset because they are too close to the street and worry that snowplows will hit them in the winter,” Quijas said. “A big snow might make it hard to get to your mail, too, but that won’t bother me — I have a post office box.”
Quijas and his Second Street neighbors have been picking up their mail at the post office since April and will continue to do so as the mailbox issue is sorted out.
“You can’t make everybody happy,” Hall said. “That’s the bad thing about it but, yeah, I need to get mail delivery back out there to those people. It’s been a long time. They’ve been more than patient. They need to get their mail delivered out there.”
“We’re not trying to be hard to work with,” Peterson said. “We just want to set a good precedent so that when this happens in other neighborhoods, it has the best, most appealing look it can. In any new development in the metro, you’ll see the CBU. You won’t see the mounted style of mailbox because they’re a maintenance nightmare. The CBUs are very neat and tidy and well taken care of. They don’t need much maintenance and can hold up to snow plows going by them and things like that.”
Fourteen dog bites were reported in the city of Perry during the last fiscal year. In 2016 the number of postal employees attacked by dogs nationwide was 6,755, a jump of more than 200 bites over 2015, according to the USPS annual ranking of top dog attack cities.
Don’t we have laws in Perry to protect people from vicious dogs? Why are there dogs running loose? What if that had been a child those dogs bit? Vicious dogs should not be allowed anywhere. I own a dog also, but I would never own a dog that bites people. Require a muzzle on them.
Seems like a lot of time, effort, money, inconvenience (for residents) to implement an indirect solution when the direct solution should be proper management of vicious dogs. I haven’t heard that the pot-bellied pig we were so concerned about is causing mail delivery issues. And I guess “curb appeal” is in the eye of the beholder with CBUs that look like confinement centers for mail–I don’t see the “curb appeal” of ugly metal boxes stacked in a cluster along the roadside. But then I prefer a lonely old farm barn with a 2-story farmhouse nearby to an urban high rise of concrete squares stacked together for “curb appeal.” More efficient for the USPS? Safer? Sure. But “curb appeal.” Maybe in the sense that they look like something dragged to the curb to be picked up on garbage day?
Laura Stebbins: you can write laws, but you can’t fix stupid. You can’t make people care, and that is the problem. Sure, after the second bite the dog has to be removed from city premises, but that’s not going to stop them from getting another dog or pretending to get another dog and the same thing happening again. The indirect solution, in this case, is the most tenable.
I just moved from Des Moines, and I’m appalled by the number of dogs running freely, doing their business in my yard. Isn’t there a leash law in Perry? Perhaps a community education campaign to educate citizens of the consequences of violating the laws and providing a phone number to animal control so the police don’t waste their time with “dog at large” complaints.
The problem in my opinion is the dogs running loose. Why don’t you have a dog-catcher truck and have it go around town and catch and pick up the dogs? Stiffer fines! I really like you, Jack Butler, but your comment about the post office doing what they want because they are with the federal government. I would like to add to that comment: “How does it feel?” Our chamber moved the farmers market from a perfectly good location to a cramped little square downtown because it served their purpose! They didn’t give us the opportunity to even discuss it! So no sympathy from me. I think it looks terrible, too. I wouldn’t buy a home there because it makes the neighborhood look “trashy.”
I am a runner and almost every day have a dog run after me, a couple of times charging me. I was bitten in Colorado a few years ago. They were stiff with addressing the problem, dog not tied up. This is the issue that needs to be addressed soon. Owners always say,” My dog won’t hurt you.” My response: “Little Toby does not know me and so may bite me protecting you.” I have gone to the police station time and time again. Last time I asked the officer to come let me know what happened after he spoke to owner. Never got any report from that. So I do understand the postman’s side, and I do think the post box stands are way old fashioned and tacky. Solve the dog problem!