Lake Pleasant snail mail: Mysterious delay in tax payments solved

Rural communities in Adirondacks see decline in quality of mail service

By Tim Rowland

Lake Pleasant Town Clerk Stephanie Smith thought something might be amiss as the calendar turned to February and some town property owners who typically paid their tax bills became delinquent. She was all the more suspicious because it wasn’t just a few — dozens of bills were going unpaid, almost as if some concerted tax revolt was in the making.

All of February went by and still no payments. February turned to March. Then in the middle of the month the mystery was solved. On two consecutive days, thick bundles of envelopes arrived at the local post office, all addressed to the town, all containing tax checks and all postmarked back in January.

“It was almost like they’d been put on a shelf somewhere, and then someone came along and said, ‘Oh, what’s this?’” Smith said.

One mystery of course, begat another — how could this have happened?

A spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service said an investigation didn’t turn up any clues.

Other communities have mail issues

After becoming suspicious, Smith began contacting property owners who confirmed that their checks had been mailed on time. Not all the delinquent checks arrived at once. Sometimes a property owner would mail a second check to the town, only to have the first one arrive shortly thereafter.

Nor is Lake Pleasant the only victim. At an April Hamilton County supervisors meeting, multiple stories were swapped about U.S. mail snafus, from having to stop payment on checks to vendors that never arrived to utility bills arriving after the payment-due date.

Town of Wells Supervisor Beth Hunt said what was once the most stable of institutions with long-term employees now seems to fly by the seat of its pants. When the local post office lost its lease, it wound up for a time in a trailer in 2022 on property it leased from the town. When the post office didn’t pay the lease, Hunt said she had to call her congressional office for help.

A decline in rural post offices

Also gone are the days when, in a small town, a name and a street would be enough to ensure delivery.

Now, if the address isn’t spot-on exact, it’s returned to the sender. Hunt said it doesn’t appear to be anyone’s fault, it’s just that with staffing issues, higher turnover and contract workers, the connection between mail carrier and homeowner is getting lost. 

And with shorter hours, in which rural post offices often close for lunch, they are less likely to connect residents with each other.

“It used to be kind of a social thing, where people would come to the post office and see each other,” Hunt said. 

Steph Larsen, a campaign director at the Partnership Project, an environmental advocate, said small towns are right to be concerned.

“Community connections and camaraderie are also essential to the health and vibrancy of small towns,” she said. “Humans need community and connection. We want to be known, cared about. Many people choose small town living for that exact reason to live in a place where you don’t need to prove who you are with an ID because you’re already known. There’s comfort and security in that.”

An essential service erodes

When working for the Center for Rural Affairs, Larsen identified six institutions key to the health of small communities: School, church, grocery store, gathering place for food and/or drink, gas station and post office. When one of those pillars leaves, the rest become threatened.

Post offices are generally the last to go, Larsen said, but contract workers and limited hours can erode its standing.

“It’s very noticeable when someone in an essential institution in a small town can’t share a common history or connection because they are a contract worker and don’t live there, don’t know anyone, and thus can’t care about the people they’re serving in the same way,” she said. “Trying to save money by cutting hours or full-time status further degrades the structure of the community and leads to more people leaving.”

It is also possible that the squeeze on small town post offices and postal workers will worsen. President Trump, calling the post office “a tremendous loser” has proposed shifting the independent agency under the Commerce Department, a move experts say would be tremendously expensive in its own right, and likely precipitate further cuts to small-town service.

What’s next for the post office?

Trump has also flirted with the idea of privatizing the U.S. Postal Service which, according to the National Association of Letter Carriers Union, would likely prioritize deliveries in dense, urban or suburban areas at the expense of communities with sparse populations.

Technology, meanwhile, has been a mixed blessing. Mechanical sorters at post office hubs are faster and more accurate than humans, but at the same time Smith said it can seem a bit silly for a letter addressed to a Lake Pleasant post office box to be driven 90 miles to Albany, only to be driven 90 miles back the next day.

“Even though I know it needs to go in someone’s box who lives right here in town, they still have to send it down (to  Albany).” Rather than take the chance, Smith said she sometimes delivers the letter personally if she knows she’ll be running into the person later in the day.

Still, it seems kind of strange. “When I was a little kid we were taught that mail was sacred; our parents told us it’s a felony if you opened your neighbor’s mailbox,” she said. “And the mailman marched around our neighborhood like he was on a mission. He took his job seriously.”

Photo at top: Lake Pleasant Town Clerk Stephanie Smith with a stack of tax returns that arrived all at once at the local post office up to months after they had been mailed. Photo by Tim Rowland