Colorado’s U.S. senators meet with postmaster to find solutions
For many months now, elected officials in Colorado have been raising postal challenges with regional and federal Postal Service leadership. And just this week — after a slew of letters and local meetings over the past year — Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper sat down with Postmaster Louis DeJoy to discuss the issues face to face.
“For over two years, Colorado communities have told us about the painful delays in mail delivery and gaps in USPS services they face, and today we raised those issues directly to Postmaster Dejoy,” Bennet said in a prepared statement.
According to an aide for Hickenlooper, the senators’ goals were to “identify policies that better recruit new mail carriers, secure affordable housing, and expand outdated, too-small postal facilities.”
A Bennet aide added that the senators “reiterated the need to address staffing shortages, housing affordability for USPS employees and infrastructure improvements in order to hold Dejoy and USPS to their commitment to Coloradans.”
However, during the meeting Tuesday, “Dejoy did not offer specifics on his commitment to improve service and delivery issues facing Coloradans but indicated that he and USPS were working on improving them,” according to the Bennet aide.
However, the Hickenlooper aide added that the senators only heard about “problems not solutions.”
“His explanations were unsatisfactory, and we plan to follow up with USPS to make sure the situation is resolved for Coloradans,” Hickenlooper said in a prepared statement.
Frustration between the Postal Service and the communities it serves has been on the rise. In Crested Butte, the town recently formed a coalition of mountain communities (including the town of Avon) to consider taking legal action amid the Postal Service’s failure to provide adequate service.
And in February, Rep. Joe Neguse, who serves most of Eagle County in Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District, expressed his “deep concerns” over the mismanagement of post offices on the Western Slope. Neguse called the district leadership’s inaction and “lack of initiative” to address challenges “immensely frustrating,” stating that the district leadership has apparently “declined nearly every opportunity to work with these communities to identify and implement solutions.”
Consistently, Postal Service representation has pointed to staffing and housing as its primary challenge in addressing the service issues in the mountain communities.
“For many months, we have been aggressively seeking both clerks and carriers to stabilize our workforce,” said James Boxrud, a Postal Service spokesperson, in November. “These challenges are not unique to our mountain and resort communities in Eagle County. The advent of the pandemic, the increase of consumer use of ordering necessities online and the national employment challenges have exacerbated this for many communities. Cost of living is also a challenge for Colorado resort communities.”
As the challenges persist, Bennet’s aide said that “he will continue to raise these issues to Dejoy because it is clear that the Colorado Wyoming District needs resources to address them.”
The meeting follows the most recent outreach effort by the senators, which was an invitation via letter to Dejoy to visit Colorado and see the challenges firsthand. According to the senators’ aides, this invitation was reiterated at the meeting and remains open, but no visit has been scheduled.