Is your mailbox installed backwards?

People living on Kent’s West Hill were tired of getting
ripped off. Their mail was being stolen. Thieves were
prowling open garages.

The police say the community was targeted because of the
easy on-and-off access to I-5 and close proximity to
Highways 516 and 167.

Dawn Banfield wanted to do something about it. “We just
started looking for how you can stop it,” Banfield said.
“The vandal-proof mailboxes were the only option that we
had.”

Banfield went to the City of Kent to see if the
neighborhood could get those large key-entry cluster boxes
installed. The city agreed to match any money the
neighborhood could raise in dollars and sweat to put the
boxes in.

But as those boxes started being installed last year,
curiosity put Barry Nelson in front of his computer. He
wanted to check out the different sizes and
specifications.

“I was seeing how big they are, how much they weigh, how
many slots there are, and basically I noticed on their
website postal regulations,” he said.

And that’s when he noticed the safety guidelines section
which the U.S. Postal Service has for the installation of
these Cluster Box Units or CBU’s. “It spells it out very
clearly in bold letters that these units had to be turned
away from the street. The customer couldn’t stand in the
street accessing their mail.”

All the boxes in the neighborhood were being put in with
the slots facing the street which is the way most of them
are installed everywhere in Washington, but it’s also
against the Postal Service’s own regulations.

The CBU’s are designed so mail carriers can drive up and
deliver the mail without having to get out of their
trucks. The older boxes have two sided access so
customers don’t have to stand in their street to get their
mail, but the newer, more tamper-resistant boxes only open
from one side.

Ernie Swanson with the USPS admitted “someone at some
point assumed, I guess, that the proper way to do that was
to put it facing the street for ease of access for our
carriers as well as the customers.”

Swanson said the Postal Service has been installing these
boxes incorrectly for years.

“I have no idea how many we might be talking about,” he
said. “There undoubtedly are some out there, beside these
ones in discussion, that were mounted contrary to our own
regulations.”

Swanson said no one had ever raised the safety concerns of
having these boxes face the street until now.

So the national office has ordered the local USPS office
to turn them around, at least in Kent, which Dawn Banfield
said makes no sense. “Everybody else’s mailboxes face the
street for heaven’s sake, and they have for years.”

Banfield believes the switch will make it virtually
impossible for people to get their mail. Turning some of
the CBU’s would make people walk on lawns or through
bushes to get their mail, but Barry Nelson says all he’s
concerned about is safety. “The Post Office has now done
the right thing, protected the public safety in the West
Hill of Kent, and who knows maybe they’ll start looking at
all the other cities in the state of Washington and the
nation to fix those.”

If you’re concerned about the safety of these boxes in
your neighborhood, Ernie Swanson with USPS said it would
look at them on a case-by-case basis.