POA Board approves funds for new mailboxes

At the Regular Session board meeting on Tuesday, the Board of Directors approved $390,182.03 plus a 2.5 percent contingency from the Repair and Replacement funds to replace the mailboxes throughout the entire community. The three-phase project will take approximately 18 months to complete.

It has been many years since the existing mailboxes were installed. Most of them have far exceeded the life expectancy and their serviceable life and replacement parts are obsolete. The current style of mailbox clusters are also easily vandalized and habitually broken into. According to the POA, USPS has not been helpful with providing assistant to resident and has previously declined to offer any financial assistance for repair and replacement of any mailboxes.

The Mailbox Replacement Project will affect 96 physical locations at various streets throughout the community. The POA is planning to replace existing free-standing pedestal-style cluster mailbox units and existing free-standing pedestal-style parcel mailboxes with new mail delivery equipment that includes fully integrated parcel boxes in the new configurations. Lighting will not be added at this time.

There are three different cluster configurations: eight mailbox clusters, 12 mailbox clusters and 16 mailbox clusters. The new boxes will be more secure and residents should see a decline in mail theft.

Cement slabs will be replaced on an as-needed basis. The individual parcel boxes will not be replaced, the clusters will utilize only the parcel boxes on each individual cluster.

The POA is using a vendor for the work to be done. The work will be done in three stages over and 18 month period. Operations will remove and dispose of the old mailboxes to save the POA approximately $45,000.

The contractor will work with the post office to get the keys to the new mailboxes to residents.