Pie Town getting temporary post office
Slightly more than a week ago, residents of Catron County’s Pie Town feared they were about to lose their local post office, that they would have to drive 22 miles southeast to Datil to get their mail.
Now, they are just trying to keep up with where the heck in Pie Town they are supposed to go for mail.
After suddenly installing cluster mail boxes in Pie Town late last week, the U.S. Postal Service announced this week that the Pie Town Post Office is being moved into a temporary location that, according to locals, was once a real estate office. Residents who just days ago received keys for the cluster boxes will soon get new keys for boxes that are being installed in the temporary location.
And at 5 p.m. Wednesday,the Postal Service is hosting a public meeting at the Pie Town Community Center to discuss locations for a new permanent post office.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” said Shannon Donnelly, a Pie Town resident who serves the town’s volunteer fire department as assistant chief for medical operations. “We have an abundance of postal service now. So far, it seems like the mail is coming through.”
A March 28 letter from the U.S. Postal Service informed Pie Town Post Office customers that it was temporarily suspending post office services in the town on April 27 because the building housing the post office had been found to be unsafe and beyond repair. The letter noted that the Postal Service intended to relocate the post office to a “modular building” as soon as possible and would make centralized (cluster) boxes available at some point. But until then, the letter explained, customers could pick up their mail in Datil.
That set off a furor in Pie Town, a place of about 200 people. There were concerns that some residents would be unable to make a 40-plus-mile round trip to Datil and, as a result, unable to collect timesensitive bills and legal notices or receive vital medications.
U.S. Sens. Tom Udall, D-N.M., and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce,R-N.M., teamed up to send a letter to Postmaster General Megan Brennan expressing their concern about the situation and urging the Postal Service to keep a permanent post office open in Pie Town.
The cluster boxes appeared almost overnight in Pie Town last week, and earlier this week, Greg Shelton, a Postal Service real estate specialist, notified Pie Town residents that the post office was being moved into the temporary building and mail delivery would soon be available there.
“Right now it looks as if things are going the way the community wants,” Catron County Commissioner Anita Hand said Thursday. “We owe a huge thank you to our congressional delegation — senators Heinrich and Udall and Rep. Pearce. They went above and beyond the call of duty.”
Donnelly told the Journal on Thursday that it appeared that workers are going in and out of the temporary building getting it ready for mail delivery. Shelton’s notification informed customers they would be asked to visit the temporary location to pick up their new keys once post office boxes have been installed there.
In the meantime, Pie Town residents are still getting their mail at the cluster boxes, which are located in front of the old post office. Donnelly said it is her understanding that the cluster boxes will be removed when the temporary building is ready to receive mail. She said she will not be sorry to see them go.
“They are quite ugly and not in the best position,” she said.