SAN ANTONIO — Thefts of cluster mailboxes have become such a problem that elected leaders are now pushing for action.
San Antonio Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito of District 7, filed a council consideration request (CCR) proposing a plan she believes can help solve the problem.
"What we're proposing to do is two things." Alderete Gavito said. "First, we're going to try to add street lights near the cluster mailboxes because we know that the more lighting that will help deter crime of these mailboxes. The second thing we're going to do is to create a task force of involved stakeholders, USPS, developers, real estate, council and others to say, how do we prevent this going forward?"
One neighborhood in her district has dealt with the problem for years. The Northwest Crossing Association has 4,000 homes, and 50 cluster mailboxes that serve about a third of the neighborhood. Kenneth Pfeiffer, the president of the Northwest Crossing Association, explains their neighborhoods cluster mailboxes have been broken into hundreds of times.
"The worst is that the post office is in the process of saying, okay, the box is broken, so now we will not deliver to that cluster box and you have to come five miles away o Richland Hills to pick up your mail," he said. "That is a real problem for the elderly and for the disabled. There's a cluster box here that has been out of service for two months and yet they still are asking all our homeowners that have this problem to go over there. "
The neighborhood claims they've gone back and forth with the post office to no avail. The issue does not get solved.
"The problem is how do you prevent that kind of crime? Pfeiffer said. "Usually happens in the middle of the night. Not always. And, you know, we have security 24/7, but they can't sit at every of those fifty mailboxes waiting for something to happen. So the security issue is a problem, but crime is going to happen. "
Last month, Congressman Castro along with other congress members penned a letter to the USPS, asking them to replace cluster mailboxes.
Pfeiffer is skeptical of any plan actually making a difference.
"How do you stop crime, and a task force in and of itself and whatever recommendations they make, what are they going to be?" he said. "You know, a lot of our homeowners have put up security cameras and it didn't stop them. They're wearing a mask. It's the middle of the night. They sometimes even do it in the middle of the day, and so what does the light do?"
Alderete Gavito says she hopes the complex issue can be tackled with all stakeholders in one place.
"This one [task force] is important is because we hear so many mixed messages in regards to cluster mailboxes," she said. "Let's be smarter about this so that way we can prevent this going forward. Again, like I said, mail delivery is a federal responsibility. We just we're not seeing enough action being done. So we're taking things into our own hands."
The proposal will head to the governance committee who will decide if the proposal could actually happen.