Kane County Reporter

During the Feb. 27 Montgomery Village Board meeting, officials discussed the village's mailbox repair and replacement policy. 

The village has long had a policy of assisting residents who have had their mailboxes damaged or destroyed due to municipal actions of clearing roads, especially in the winter with snow plows. Village employees used to go out to inspect the mailbox, and if the village was responsible for damages, the mailbox would be repaired or replaced free of charge. This policy changed a few years back due to staffing shortages, and the village opted to have the residents repair the mailbox themselves and file for a reimbursement check up to $75 from the village.

Trustee Dan Gier laid out his concerns about the amount of staff hours expended on the program. Between receiving the call, sending someone out to inspect damages, issuing residents a damage notice, walking them through the process, and then receiving the repair receipt and issuing a check, he felt it would be more efficient to just have staff go out and repair the mailboxes like before. Gier said that in most cases it was a quick and simple fix taking up 15 minutes and maybe $15 worth of supplies. Gier believes that if the village damages a mailbox it should be responsible for fixing it, but some requests should be rejected if it was determined that the post was rotted or a strong storm knocked it over. 

"[The village] damaged it and this is really the only thing that we do in the village where when we damage somebody's property that we don't repair it in-house. If there’s anything, anything that we do and we damage somebody's property through the course of operations, we either make the repair or we pay to have repair made," Gier said at the meeting. "Like Director Wolfe said, there's not a lot of them. You know if we had 12 were found to be our fault you know and it’s a lot of goodwill towards the residents ... we're repairing something that we've damaged. That's our responsibility to repair."

Some public works staff members were concerned about having to take on responsibility for residents' mailboxes. Concerns included being responsible for more elaborate or particular mailboxes, or having to choose a new mailbox if damage does occur. Other members were concerned for residents, especially those that couldn’t repair it themselves or afford handyman’s prices, which were supposedly around $200. Other village members thought that no change with procedure was necessary because there hasn't been backlash from the community. 

The board ended up tabling the conversation in order to get some estimates from village staff to figure out which method would be more efficient for the village.