Hey, Post Office… how ’bout thinkin’ outside the box? | Letters

The Post Office itself could help ease the traffic and congestion in the area of the Blair Avenue road construction, and in its own parking lot, by temporarily placing mail-drop boxes at four or five locations around the perimeter of the town. Several convenient locations come to mind...

It is clear the road work on the streets adjacent to the Friday Harbor post office will continue into at least October, and won’t be completely finished until spring of next year. Shades of “Big Bertha” in Seattle . . .

The Post Office itself could help ease the traffic and congestion in that area, and in its own parking lot, by temporarily placing mail-drop boxes at four or five locations around the perimeter of the town.

These could be posted for pickup at 1:30 p.m. or earlier, ensuring that mail deposited in these boxes would meet the daily 3 p.m. dispatch to the mainland.

Many postal patrons go to the post office only to mail something that already has postage affixed (stamps, their own postal meter postage, a pre-paid label purchased on-line, a return envelope with pre-paid postage, etc); these customers are not there to purchase anything or to visit a post office box.

Temporarily locating mail-drop boxes elsewhere around the town would alleviate the necessity of these patrons visiting the post office at all, and would help to ease some of the congestion in that area.

Several convenient locations come to mind: The parking lot of the County Fire Station on Mullis St.; the grounds of the sewage treatment plant at Harbor St. and Tucker Ave.; the parking lot of OPALCO on Beaverton Valley Rd.; the parking lot of the Peace Health Medical Center at the upper end of Spring St.; the Park-&-Ride ferry lot on Nichols St.  You and your readers can probably think of other locations just as suitable.

Locating temporary mail drop boxes is equally in the interests of the Post Office itself as for the rest of us; I’m confident that the owners or occupants of these locations would be willing to accommodate the temporary location of a free-standing mail drop box on their premises “for the common good” until this road work is finished and business returns to normal.

John Chessell/Friday Harbor