Star Valley Ranch Mayor Ru Rok called into the Weekday Wake-Up on Thursday, July 2 to update listeners on a resolution to mail delivery service issues in the town.

(0:00) Star Valley Ranch Mayor Rue Rock for a quick chat this morning. (0:04) Mayor Rock, appreciate your time. (0:06) There’s been a little frustration happening in Star Valley Ranch to say the least.

(0:11) And of course, you know, nothing else going on. (0:13) So no other stress from anything else, right? (0:15) Well, Mayor Rock, appreciate your time. (0:17) Just tell us what happened here and what started this with the mail delivery in the town.

(0:22) Hey, yeah, thanks, Duke, and good morning to you and to everyone. (0:26) Appreciate the time. (0:27) It’s been, yeah, kind of a stressful past few weeks or a couple of weeks here at Star Valley Ranch.

(0:33) We had an issue with our mail delivery, which kind of got started about the second week of June (0:40) when we were first notified by our contracted mail carrier who delivers the mail from the Thane post office (0:47) that there might be some changes coming from USPS. (0:50) So the mail, we share a zip code with Thane. (0:53) So we don’t have our own zip code and don’t have our own contract with the post office.

(0:57) And that’s how the arrangement has been set up for the past 18 years since we first got a mail center in town in 2008. (1:05) And we currently have 923 residents that get their mail at our little town mail center. (1:12) For whatever reason, there was a review of some sort done by the Denver post office, which is our district location for the state of Wyoming.

(1:22) And there’s, I guess, an office there where they review the contracts for the postal carriers. (1:31) And someone there determined that our contract was not correct and should actually just be a drop off contract rather than the mail carrier putting mail in individual mailboxes. (1:43) So that set up a whole domino effect of activity.

(1:48) And where we ended up was that after a lot of back and forth with the post office, (1:55) they literally cut the funding to our mail carriers contract last Saturday. (2:00) And we had been trying to work with the post office up to that point to prevent that from happening or to determine if the town was actually going to have to take on that responsibility. (2:11) So before the actual contract issue happened on Saturday, I had reached out to Senator Dockstader and also to our congressional delegation (2:21) because we just weren’t getting answers to our questions and trying to understand why, after 18 years, there was this sudden change to our mail delivery.

(2:29) And we’re also trying to keep our residents informed. (2:32) And I’m sure you’re aware, along with lots of other people, (2:37) how our post offices here in Star Valley have a huge problem right now trying to deal with Amazon packages, which go through the post office. (2:45) And so our Fane post office is pretty overwhelmed and the folks that work there are doing the best they can to pass those packages through.

(2:52) But this time of year, especially when we get a lot of residents that come back from warmer climes, I think our package volume just probably just goes up exponentially. (3:03) Anyway, long story short, we had some more back and forth with the post office. (3:07) I had to go down and talk to the postmaster in Fane on Monday.

(3:11) I had really no choice but to close our mail center for mail delivery. (3:15) We had no personnel. We didn’t have a facility set up to be able to distribute packages ourselves.

(3:20) And that was kind of where we were at. (3:22) And then the logjam kind of broke on Tuesday afternoon, I guess, which is really due to Senator Lummis’s intervention behind the scenes. (3:32) And my town administrator and I received quite a few phone calls from the Fane post office, as well as from some customer service managers in the Denver office who told us that a decision about the contract that had been made had really been made improperly in Denver.

(3:48) And so they were going to rectify that and resume our mail deliveries as usual, basically starting next week. (3:56) So it’s been quite the roller coaster ride for the past couple of weeks, like I said. (4:02) Wow.

So holy cow. (4:04) So as of right now, things are still not being sorted into the mail drop off location that won’t start until next week? (4:14) Well, actually, what has been going on, and this is really amazing. (4:17) So our mail carrier, she actually lives at Star Valley Ranch.

(4:19) She’s a town resident. (4:21) And after this happened last Saturday, she called me on Sunday and she was just really upset with everything. (4:27) And she said she told me that she was going to continue delivering packages of mail to the best of her ability.

(4:34) She had a part time employee who, of course, she couldn’t pay. (4:37) So she didn’t have that help. (4:39) So she started bringing the mail in on Sunday and packages.

(4:43) And on Monday, there were, I think it was 22 pallets of Amazon packages. (4:49) And so the town staff was in the parking lot helping her bring it all in. (4:53) But literally, we just, it couldn’t get delivered.

(4:55) There was so much mail to bring in. (4:57) She was putting the mail, like letters and things in mailboxes. (5:00) But the packages were just stacking up in the area behind where the mailboxes are.

(5:05) And it was just floor to ceiling with packages. (5:07) And so we came up with a plan where yesterday afternoon, with our mail carriers help, we got town staff and also some volunteer residents. (5:17) And we set up some package delivery times between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. yesterday afternoon to start getting those packages out to residents.

(5:26) We’re going to do the same thing today and tomorrow. (5:28) And then by Monday, we think we’ll be caught up enough that she’ll be able to resume just, you know, doing the mail deliveries and the packages the way she used to. (5:36) It’s been pretty wild.

(5:38) Holy cow. (5:39) Well, it sounds like a solution has been, it’s been resolved, though, and a solution is here. (5:44) And so just to reiterate something here, though, it sounds like the frustration obviously came out of headquarters in Denver.

(5:53) And not only was it not the local personnel’s fault that this happened, but they went above and beyond to help rectify the situation is what it sounds like, right? (6:04) That’s absolutely true. (6:05) And even the mail, the post office in SANE, I felt terrible for those folks, too, because, again, they were caught in the middle and they were just, you know, executing what they were being told to do. (6:17) And I think really a lot of it boiled down to a lack of communication and decisions being made somewhere, you know, in a Denver office that did not, they had no idea the impact that they were or the chaos they were going to cause here, you know, in our little town.

(6:36) It’s just, you know, you got to talk to each other. (6:38) And we did, like I said, we got through it and we worked it out. (6:41) And I was very grateful for the help of Senator Dockstader and Senator Lummis.

(6:46) And going forward, we just are going to keep an open dialogue with the SANE post office. (6:50) And, you know, we’re going to work toward never having this happen again for our town. (6:55) Well, I’m glad you can put that behind you a little bit, because, you know, there’s there’s a couple of events going on in the town of Star Valley Ranch this weekend.

(7:02) And I know the association is doing a lot of that and everything. (7:07) But no, Mayor Rock, I appreciate your time. (7:09) And anything else you’d like to mention on this? (7:12) No, just really glad to have it behind us.

(7:15) Just like you said, you know, this weekend and Saturday is going to be just a wonderful day for our community and for our country. (7:22) And so nice not to have this hanging over our head and knowing that people can go to the mail center now and they can go ahead and pick up their mail and their packages. (7:30) And for packages that can’t get delivered in our mail center, that’s going back to normal.

(7:36) They’ll get a yellow slip and they can go to the SANE post office and pick those up. (7:39) So, again, there’s a lot of people that helped get this resolved. (7:42) And I’m just really grateful for that and have to thank our town residents for how patient and generous they were throughout.

(7:49) We had people stopping by town hall asking what they could do to help, even dropping off baked goods. (7:55) It was really, really quite something. (7:56) So, I’m just, again, really glad it’s behind us and looking forward to celebrating this weekend.

(8:02) Starved by the Ranch Mayor Rue Rock this morning on the Weekday Wakeup. (8:04) Mayor, thanks so much for your time. We appreciate it.

(8:07) Hey, thanks, Duke. (8:08) Yep, it’s all part of the Weekday Wakeup on SVI Radio.