Munds Park in uproar over closed post office
Elizabeth Jones was 62 years old when she first started running her small-town post office. She had little training and no experience in the postal service, but managing the mailroom seemed like honest work.
She hoped her earnings would support her modest pension.
The small building with its bright white trim and hand-painted sign is a centerpiece in Munds Park, a quiet community of about 900 people outside of Flagstaff. Some residents stop in to pick up letters and packages almost every day.
“It’s vital,” Jones said. “It’s the most important place in the park, to be honest with you.”
So it was a mystery for many in the rural community when the post office abruptly closed last month. A letter taped to the post office door on June 30 announced the shutdown and apologized for the inconvenience without providing details:
“This is an emergency suspension of this office, not a permanent closure of local services,” it said.
Jones, however, knew the story, as did postal inspectors and the Coconino County Sheriff’s Department. Both agencies conducted investigations into an argument and an “alleged assault” at the location between two postal workers from different branches — Jones and the Flagstaff postmaster, her boss.
The sheriff’s office said Postmaster Barbara Magenot visited the Munds Park post office to perform an audit, but Jones said it was “to cause trouble.”
‘It didn’t have anything to do with me’
Cheri Schultz worked as a mail sorter at the Munds Park post office for two months before learning she was out of a job. The day the post office closed, she opened early to help a man get his supply of insulin and delivered a week’s worth of mail to a housebound elderly woman.
Munds Park, which is about 30 minutes from the larger stores in nearby Flagstaff, grew more reliant on the local post office as the coronavirus pandemic made shopping trips a health risk. Schultz knew from sorting the mail that a lot of medication came through the station; a large number of residents are elderly or retired.
Although Jones and her staff were “essential workers,” she said the U.S. Postal Service offered no help to her small operation.
“They never came down and talked to us,” Jones said. “They just told me I had to go to work. And so we did.”
The Munds Park post office is one of many branches in rural areas that the U.S. Postal Service operates through contracts with companies or individuals like Jones.
But Jones said her relationship with her supervisors in Flagstaff had soured long before they closed her office — as early as six months ago, when Magenot was appointed postmaster. The way Jones saw it, Magenot started “hassling” her over complaints about wrinkled mail and missing packages, which she said were trivial and commonplace events.
“It didn’t have anything to do with me,” she said.
Argument led to closure
Deputies were called to the post office on June 24 after hearing reports that the Flagstaff postmaster had been assaulted during a standard visit to Munds Park, according to Coconino County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jon Paxton.
The sheriff ’s office believes Jones asked the postmaster to leave the station, then “physically escorted” her out of the building when she refused. Jones was charged with a misdemeanor for disorderly conduct following a twoweek investigation.
Jones told The Arizona Republic she regretted her actions but felt persecuted by the town where she’s lived for 12 years, and cut loose from a federal agency she loyally served.
When she asked the postmaster to leave last Tuesday in the early hours before opening, Jones said she was stressed and determined to preserve social distance for her longtime employee whose brother recently died from COVID-19.
Later, she said she was defending her territory: She felt Magenot wanted to throw her out of the post office.
“My post office,” Jones said. “The post office I pay the rent on.”
Schultz was sorting mail that morning for her regular shift. Tensions were high from the moment Magenot arrived, she said, indicative of a larger “animosity” between the two women she’d grown aware of in the short time she worked there.
“She started right off by telling Liz (Jones) that she was here to do an audit and that Liz was going to listen to her and do what she says,” Schultz said.
She took her mail to a back room to escape the tension and didn’t witness what happened next.
The Postal Inspection Service conducted an investigation into the “alleged assault,” according to Liz Davis, a postal inspector and spokeswoman for the department’s Phoenix division, but could not offer comments on the case. Magenot directed The Republic to a Postal Service spokesman, who also declined to offer details on the events.
In Jones’ view, her physical contact with the postmaster was benign and not limited to one side.
“It was a kiddy-bumping thing, you know, like a couple of cock roosters,” she said. “We were physically pushing each other with our chests.”
Munds Park staff worked at the post office for a full week until the Flagstaff division suddenly closed the station, Jones said. She found out from an employee while she was away on her lunch hour.
U.S. Postal Service spokesman Rod Spurgeon said the contract with Munds Park was abruptly canceled June 30 but did not confirm why or who terminated the arrangement.
Community rallies to revive post office
The shutdown, whatever the cause, hasn’t stopped Munds Park residents from rallying around the post office and demanding that officials reopen the branch.
Residents and retirees in the small community have lately been forced to drive 40 miles round-trip to retrieve their mail in Flagstaff, where they wait in line in summer heat outside a mobile postal unit dispatched from Phoenix. A community church in Munds Park soon arranged a mail courier service to spare elderly residents the trek.
Allison Tiffany, who helped organize Munds Park into action, said she heard “horror stories” from elderly neighbors about collecting their mail “with blazing heat, no seating, no nothing,” she said. “It’s just a recipe for disaster.”
One woman, 28-year-old Lucero McLain, said she collapsed after a halfhour wait for mail in the Flagstaff sun. She came to pick up her monthly bills but was ferried away in an ambulance.
McLain said she had no idea why her town had suddenly lost mail service, though “you hear rumors here and there.”
The Postal Service later added canopies and provided water in the parking lot after staff from Rep. Tom O’Halleran’s office said they visited the postal unit and suggested improvements to USPS.
O’Halleran said his office was working with the Postal Service to get mail to the elderly, disabled, and to people who don’t have transportation or otherwise can’t get to Flagstaff during the scheduled hours.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema was also communicating with the U.S. Postal Service to find a solution for Munds Park.
“In communities across Arizona, the Postal Service is a critical lifeline that connects loved ones, delivers prescription drugs, and transports other critical resources,” she said in a statement.
After two weeks of disruption and community action, the U.S. Postal Service said it would start delivering mail to Munds Park P.O. boxes on Wednesday afternoon.
The U.S. Postal Service will operate the Munds Park post office until it can find a new contractor to replace Jones, according to Spurgeon, the USPS spokesman. Four bidders applied to manage the post office, but the approval process may take weeks or months.
“The Postal Service is committed to Munds Park and we look forward to continuing to serve the community’s mailing needs,” Spurgeon said.
Munds Park was more frustrated by the Postal Service’s response to the shutdown than the “emergency situation” that caused it, Tiffany said.
“The solution that they provided is just absolutely, positively unreasonable and unsafe under any circumstances,” she said.
For Jones, who is now grappling with whether to stay in Munds Park, the arrangement in Flagstaff was further proof that the government didn’t care about the small-town post office.
“They didn’t care about (the post office) when I took it. They certainly didn’t care about it while I was trying to run it. And they definitely didn’t care when they closed it down,” she said. “What they did was unconscionable.”
Jones said she did everything in her power to keep the station running smoothly from the day she walked in without an ounce of training — just a set of keys, a code to an alarm and a fresh arrival of mail. In under two years, she said she found a new owner for the property, hired good employees and added new labels and organizing tricks to her daily tasks.
Even before her office shut down, Jones wasn’t planning to renew her contract with the postal service. The work was too punishing, she said, and the money almost nothing.
“I did it because I care,” she said. “I love this community. I did everything I could to keep things moving forward.”