At some undefined date within the past year the U.S. Postal Service decided not to continue to provide curbside (roadside) mail delivery to individual homes in new residential subdivisions in North Carolina and perhaps in other states.
There are a lot of unanswered questions, some of which were summed up by Wake Forest Senior Planner Charlie Yokley. “I’m not sure what the effective date was. We were not notified by the Post Office of the change; we only found out about it when developers called us to ask how they should handle this requirement. It’s still a little murky for us as we are still working with the Post Office and developers to figure out how to handle placement and design of the kiosks.”
Yokley said the affected subdivisions include Traditions, The Reserve, Kings Glen, Tryon, Holding Village, The Regency at Heritage, Stone Mill Falls and The Homestead at Heritage.
Homes were sold and families moved into the first neighborhood in Traditions beginning late last year, and those homes do have curbside mailboxes. No one appears to know if the two other approved neighborhoods in Traditions – the area just off Oak Grove Church Road and the clustered homes on the edge of the Smith Creek Reservoir – will have curbside delivery or kiosks.
In The Reserve, there are no individual mailboxes for the new homes but neither are there any kiosks. Some families have already moved into the large new homes.
None of the other subdivisions are far enough along in their development to have homes.
The Postal Service office in Raleigh did not respond to a telephone message, but The News & Observer quoted a spokesman, Monica Coachman, who said, “There is significant cost savings in initiating all new delivery addresses with an efficient delivery method.” She did not specify the amount of savings except to say the kiosks will have “a substantial cost difference” from curbside or roadside delivery.
The cluster or kiosk will be the “default mode” for homes in new subdivisions. “When notified of plans to construct new residences, the Postal Service will review the area in question and make a decision based on what is efficient and appropriate for that area,” Coachman said.
In Wake Forest there are three types of mail delivery. The most expensive, delivery to the front door of individual homes, is still practiced in the inner core of town, inside the town limits as they existed until the 1970s when annexations began. Those annexed areas and the rural area around the town have curbside or roadside delivery to mailboxes. And the Wake Forest post office delivers to a very large rural area extending west and north of town and up into a small part of Franklin County and a rather large part of Granville County.
