Vashon Post Office continues to stagger through a crippling staffing shortage at the height of the holiday season.

In recent weeks, the United States Postal Service has called temporary workers to fill shifts on Vashon, said David Rupert, head USPS spokesperson for the Western United States, who reached out to The Beachcomber after a King 5 news crew covered the postal crisis on Vashon on Wednesday, Nov. 23.

Currently, Rupert said, USPS is attempting to bring up to six additional mail carriers to Vashon each day, to augment the Vashon post office’s total current staff of 11 — a number that includes clerks and other workers.

In a series of phone calls and emails, Rupert detailed the severity of the problems and offered assurances that the USPS was seeking to solve the staffing problem and complete delivery to Vashon’s nine routes.

“We have a commitment to deliver the mail every day,” he said. “It is a dogfight every day.”

Citing the fact that Amazon does not have its own delivery service on the island, Rupert said that the Seattle-based mega-corporation had contracted with the US Post Office to deliver its packages, which can weigh up to 70 pounds each.

The volume of package delivery on Vashon was higher than in many similarly sized communities, he said, with approximately 2,500 packages total, from Amazon as well as other shippers, arriving for delivery every day.

Mail carriers, he said, often had to return to the post office mid-route, because the parcels and mail for their entire route would not fit in their trucks.

This delayed the delivery of mail and caused workers to log long hours, he said.

In terms of incentives to come to Vashon, Rupert said that the USPS was prohibited from reimbursing temporary workers for ferry fares, but that such workers earned overtime hours.

In a written statement sent to both The Beachcomber and Vashon-Maury Community Council (V-MCC) Rupert outlined these and other problems facing the Vashon Post Office and suggested how islanders could help.

The topic of how Vashon’s postal woes is on the agenda for V-MCC’s Thursday meeting, to be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 15, both in-person at the Land Trust Building and on Zoom.

For details, visit v-mcc.org.

Multiple issues at play

Staffing issues on Vashon include retention of workers, the cost of ferry travel, and a shortage of affordable housing, Rupert said.

Moreover, he said, deliveries on Vashon were particularly complicated by unmarked and underdeveloped roads, lack of address identification, very poor or no lighting in evening hours, and old-style, small mailboxes that were inadequate for modern mail.

“Many roads are unimproved with poor directionals and house numbers that are too small or hidden by foliage,” he said.

He urged islanders to install larger mailboxes or lockers for parcels — a solution that would eliminate the need for carriers to navigate unmarked roads or homes.

“The common, ‘tunnel mailbox’ was designed in 1915,” he said. “It works fine for letters, magazines, and small packages. But the new models are meant to accommodate an increasing number of parcels and will fit all standard USPS Priority Mailboxes and nearly 70 percent of all other parcel sizes.”

He also suggested that islanders should post reflective signs at entrances to their driveways.

Rupert’s other ideas for improvements included things beyond local control, including ferry schedule adjustments and discounted ferry passes being made available for local service workers.

He also asked for help in promoting USPS’s future job fairs through local social media and traditional media.

A virtual hiring fair for rural carriers and postal workers for all of Washington State will be held on Dec. 15 and 16, he said. (More information is available at usps.com/news.)

Rupert also held out another possible solution — reopening another contract Post Office in Burton.

“This would not provide delivery service but could be an option for those who chose a mailbox to receive their mail,” he clarified. “It would also provide mailing services.”

The Burton Post Office, operated by USPS, closed on April 30, following a lease dispute with the owner of the building in which it was housed, Harry Larson.

Prior to the closure, Larson told The Beachcomber that negotiations for a new lease had broken down over a single issue — a stipulation in the lease that he give a 24-hour notice prior to conducting maintenance on the property.

Ace Hardware: special price on bigger mailboxes

Vashon’s Ace Hardware announced on Wednesday, Dec. 14, that in cooperation with the Vashon Post Office and Vashon Community Council, the store is now selling jumbo, UPSP-approved mailboxes for $39.99 — a discount from boxes normally priced at $49.99 and $59.99. The price is an in-store special only.

Country Store’s delivery problems affect many

The current issues extend beyond individual island residents.

For County Store & Farms manager Jan Staehli, the problem is compounded by 150 — that is the approximate number of people who have their mail delivered to the County Store, located in Center.

The store has long offered outbound shipping services via UPS and Fed Ex, and in 2016, Staehli said, the store added a mailbox service in the back half of the store, charging customers monthly or yearly fees to have their mail sent to the store.

The Vashon Post Office used to deliver all the mail to the County Store to distribute into those boxes, but Staehli said she has not received regular deliveries from the post office in the past five or six weeks. She said she has twice been told by Vashon’s postmaster that the post office would not deliver mail to the County Store until the position for a carrier on that route had been filled — and had added that the Country Store’s route would be the last route to be filled.

And so, now, a new and dreaded daily routine for Staehli is to head to the post office to pick up the large volume of her customers’ mail, sometimes waiting for up to half an hour for it to be brought out to her — and even then, she said, it is not always sorted.

Opening a door behind the mailboxes at her store, Staehli revealed a narrow room made narrower by tall stacks of Amazon and other boxes stacked against a wall.

The number of packages delivered to customers at the Country Store has quadrupled since 2020, she said.

For Staehli, managing the overflowing mail service has come with an increasing cost, both in terms of the store’s bottom line and the morale of her staff.

The store has long included a place where customers could drop off packages to be returned to Amazon and other merchants — but as the costs of staffing this service bit into the Country Store’s profits, Staehli began charging the store’s non-mail box customers $1.99 for the service in early 2021.

The response, she said, was a howl of protest on social media, and some customers rudely confronting her staff about the small charge.

“I’ve had customers cuss me out, and one man was banging his fists on the counter like this,” she said, re-enacting the man’s fury while sitting at her own desk.

Other customers, she said, had been more understanding.

“We have some of the best customers in the world, too,” she said. “We really appreciate them and they are good and kind and considerate, and it’s those people who keep our heads above water.

Still, she frequently has considered ending the mail and shipping service at the store — a possibility she will again evaluate in January.

“I would love to get rid of the mail service,” she said. “If I could put in a tasting room, that would be a lot more fun.”

Mail delivery slows to stop for schools

Vashon Island School District Superintendent Slade McSheehy, in a phone call, said the mail for the district’s three schools — spread out on a campus near Center — ceased being reliably delivered this fall, and has now seemingly stopped altogether.

“It’s been [delivered] definitely less than 10 times over the last two months,” he said.

As the island’s largest employer, the district receives such important mail as checks and contracts, as well as supplies for classroom projects, he said.

On Oct. 20, McSheehy said, he went to the post office and met with Vashon’s postmaster, Ashley Lee, who told him that there were many challenges with staffing at the post office, and that the district’s mail was on a route that could not be delivered until 7:30 or 8 p.m. — after schools were closed.

“But she said she was going to put us on a route, and that she was making a commitment to get all the mail delivered before the end of the business day,” McSheehy said. “She said it might not be perfect, but we would get our mail.”

Lee also offered to be in touch with McSheehy, by text, to let him know if mail could not be delivered on any given day.

After that meeting, McSheehy recounted, he left the post office with VISD’s undelivered mail, filling up the back of his truck to the brim.

“I looked like Santa Claus on a sleigh,” he said.

During the next 10 days, McSheehy said, mail was delivered to VISD approximately three times.

In November, McSheehy said, he began to reach out again to Lee — by phone, email, and even with a handwritten letter left at the post office — but has never received a reply.

Nor, he said, has VISD received a reply to two official grievances filed with USPS — the first, by Vashon High School (VHS) office manager Jackie Merrill, in October, and the second, made by himself, on Dec. 6.

School district personnel — who have even included school board president Toby Holmes — have continued to have to go to the post office to pick up mail, he said, as he and his staff consider their next steps and options.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that 2,500 packages from Amazon arrived daily at Vashon Post Office. This version of the article states that that number also includes packages from other shippers. We strive for accuracy and regret the error.