With Christmas right around the corner, the Hailey Post Office is experiencing home delivery delays rarely experienced by residents, with packages piling up in the back and employees working long overtime hours in an attempt to make a dent in the stack—though progress has been minimal.
“We are flexing every available resource, including borrowing employees from facilities across the state, to match the workload,” said Lecia A. Hall, communications specialist for the Western Pacific area of the U.S. Postal Service. “Due to continued staffing issues, there may have been days when a customer did not receive mail, but we are rotating employees and assignments so they will get mail the following day, with the postmaster carrying a route when needed.”
Hailey resident Molly Page said she hasn’t noticed much of an improvement in service since the issues began about two months ago, but has recently seen more mail trucks delivering packages late into the night.
“A lot of the time it’s faces I don’t recognize,” she said. “You can tell it’s people who aren’t familiar with the neighborhood.”
Regardless, Page said, “there are people out there delivering packages at 9 p.m.”
Idaho State Rep. Ned Burns, D-Bellevue, said he has received numerous emails and phone calls about the issue, and has been working with local, state and federal postal officials to resolve it.
“The Hailey Post Office is working at about an 80% staff shortage right now,” Burns said. On Sunday, Dec. 11, 10 employees from Twin Falls post offices came up to help out, Burns said, “but it’s going to take several more rounds of something similar before they get out of the hole they are in.”
Hailey resident Kathleen Walker has also been working to solve the problem. She wrote to U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, asking for help from a federal level. His answer was at odds with what Hailey residents have been experiencing.
“USPS informed me it has hired two new mail carriers for the Hailey office, which they believe will help the office return to normal delivery times,” Crapo said told Walker.
Despite the two new mail carriers, Hailey residents have not noticed a change in services. Packages are still being delivered just once or twice a week, residents interviewed by the Mountain Express said.
“Yesterday, while in the [post office], I heard the clerk say that there [are] two palettes of packages that they couldn’t get to, [and that] the manager is sick and they are understaffed,” Hailey resident Kari Regan wrote on the neighborhood forum app Nextdoor.
Others on Nextdoor said they are receiving letters and sometimes small packages, but that anything too big to fit in the mailbox has delivery delays of a week or more.
Burns and Page, as well as many commenters online, said the issue is a staff shortage, not shortcomings of the working staff.
“I don’t want to be critical, and I’m grateful for all the efforts [of Hailey Post Office workers] thus far,” Page said. “I know they are working as hard as they can.”
Burns emphasized that the best thing for the public to do is to understanding and let the postal workers do their job.
“Everybody is calling and trying to complain to the postmaster,” Burns said. “Every time you call up and bug these guys, you’re taking them away from their ability to do the thing that they really want to do—whether that’s [deliver] Christmas presents or medications. They don’t want to be this far behind. You know, they just need the help to get themselves un-buried and move forward from there.”
One thing that got there on time: ballots. County Clerk Stephen McDougall Graham said mail-in votes were regularly delivered are were counted on time. He also expressed his thanks to the staff for their hard work during election season.
“The Elections Office has experienced minimal delays in USPS delivery of absentee ballots,” he said. “Since absentee ballots first went out at the end of September. There have been only two days that mail has not been delivered to the Elections Office. I am extremely grateful to the [postmaster] for his efforts in this respect.”
McDougall Graham added that the November election saw a high return rate of mail-in ballots, historically speaking, regardless of any issues at the Hailey Post Office.
The Hailey Post Office turned down multiple requests for comment.
Burns summed up the situation the postmaster and his team are in succinctly.
“They’re working super-late hours—they’re all stressed out,” he said, “And, without the additional staff to help deliver, they’re just treading water.” 
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(3) comments
Every Post office in the valley is failing, time for a private solution that actually works.
Need a follow-up article since things are just getting worse. Package out for delivery Dec. 23, no delivery, no other notification other than on-line tracking, half hour lines at Post Office.
Several months ago, we had a few issues with package delivery by USPS, but the past two or three months, they have been doing great. (I'm pretty sure Crapo is clueless, so I won't be listening to anything he says.) We are so thankful for the hard work of our local USPS employees in Hailey. We know the Louis DeJoy did everything he could as the Postmaster General to throw a monkey wrench into the USPS, and we believe our local Hailey employees are doing great - even if DeJoy tried to tie one hand behind their back.
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