The County of St. Paul is sending Canada Post a 30-day notice to come to the table and negotiate or remove the community mailboxes installed in Heinsburg at the beginning of June.
Council made the decision following a request from Langley Robitaille, who has been offered the position of postmaster if a suitable location can be found.
“I’m seeking funding to bring the building up to code, to have at least a bathroom and running water and heat. And so I’m asking (the County of) St. Paul to put some funds into renovating that building to bring it up to that standard to use it as a post office and also as a commercial building,” said Robitaille at the meeting.
In a letter supplied to council regarding the available spaces in Heinsburg, Robitaille detailed the renovations to either the Heinsburg Community Hall or the historic train station, would be needed in order for the spaces to be used as a post office.
The Heinsburg Community Hall would need a door and a wall for mail security, as well as a wheelchair ramp for accessibility. The train station requires heat, sewer, and water and is Robitaille’s preferred location.
“Canada Post does not provide any funding for renovations or updates to a building. Should the county choose to not support the installation of a post office space, Heinsburg residents will have to drive to Frog Lake to receive their mail, or they will have to pay a yearly fee of $150 to have a post office box in Elk Point,” reads Robitaille’s letter.
The letter also states the current monoboxes installed outside of the community hall are for receiving mail only, meaning residents cannot use them to send letters or to receive oversized mail like parcels.
“Canada Post will supply me with $2,279 annually to rent a space, so I am willing to give that to the county as rent as long as the postal service continues to provide the funding,” said Robitaille in the letter. Divided over the year, the rental allowance works out to just $189 per month.
“I can’t see as far as turning it into a commercial building why the municipality would be interested in that,” said Division 1 Coun. Darrell Younghans about the train station. Younghans suggested deferring the funding request to strategic planning.
“It wouldn’t be fair on Langley to say we’d defer to strategic planning when I don’t think the hope is there. I think we need to sort out with Canada Post a location for the boxes, and sort out if there’s a way for Langley to use the space,” said Reeve Steve Upham.
Canada Post needs to negotiate
Council also discussed Canada Post’s decision to not attend the meeting at length with Upham calling the corporation’s behaviour “unbelievable.”
Canada Post installed a set of community mailboxes on the municipal right of way outside the Heinsburg Community Hall when the postmaster for the office retired at the end of May. According to county administration, no notice was given to the county before the boxes were installed, and no agreement was ever signed. When the county contacted Canada Post about an agreement, the corporation sent one which was “very one-sided” and not acceptable.
“They’ve put them on municipal property with complete disregard for our ownership. The liability issue still falls with us, they never consulted the lessees as to where they should go. There is a place we could probably talk about and put them there, but for them to not even come to the table to discuss it, or to blatantly disregard our ownership of the land and admit it in the letter that they were putting it on municipal ground, plus already having a form there that they knew they needed, not being sent out to us,” said Younghans.
Younghans made a motion to send Canada Post a 30-day notice to either come to an agreement with the county or remove the mailboxes from outside the Heinsburg Community Hall. He also asked that a copy of the letter be provided to Lakeland MP Shannon Stubbs, citing her previous work for the community on the issue.
Both Shannon Stubbs and Canada Post did not respond to the Journal’s requests for comment before deadline.
