Homeowners in Sylmar Demand Door-to-Door Mail Delivery

Just about the first act of home improvement undertaken by several new homeowners in Sylmar in the last two weeks was to put up mailboxes--the old-fashioned kind with a floppy door and a flag to tell the mailman there’s a letter inside--symbolically dressing their new 42-home neighborhood with the message “Someone lives here.”

And their first disillusionment came when the postman dropped by to tell them they weren’t going to need the boxes.

Instead, they were told, mail would be delivered up the street at several NDCBUs--Neighborhood Delivery and Collection Box Units--which the U. S. Postal Service would install and maintain.

As a cost-saving measure, the Postal Service has been encouraging developers of single-family homes to use cluster mailboxes, similar to those found at apartment houses.

‘We Don’t Want It’

“They told us, ‘This is the thing of the future. We’re doing you a favor,’ ” said Sharon Ives, who owns a silver box with “Ives” printed on the side. “We’re saying, ‘Thanks, we don’t want it.’ ”

Sharon and Garry Ives, and others among the first half-dozen residents of the development, called Mission Glen, decided they wanted their mail delivered to their homes, on a short dead-end street called Rincon Avenue.

“Our view is that these are going to be ugly,” Sharon Ives said of the cluster of boxes. “When I look out the window, I don’t want to see these ugly mailboxes. I don’t want the traffic pulling up at night to get their mail. What if I get raped or mugged?”

The Iveses called the Postal Service. They called the office of Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City). When that produced no results, they steamed.

A neighbor, Pat Evans, expressed herself in signs taped to her garage door. They say:

“We Are Not Second-Class Citizens. Deliver Our Mail Now.” And, “. . . If I wanted to live in a condo, development or commune, I would have bought one!”

Evans was not home when a reporter called Friday, but there were several accounts of what she did earlier this week when a worker reportedly arrived announcing his intention to install the first of the clustered mailboxes outside her home.

“She said, ‘We don’t want them and you better get out of here,’ ” neighbor Lisa Rice reported. “She’s forceful, to be mild.” Rice is another opponent of delivery by cluster.

Ives said Evans scared the man off by demanding to see his contractor’s license.

In any case, the boxes were not installed.

A spokesman for the Postal Service said Friday that postal workers will interview everyone in the neighborhood to find out what they want. Officials will decide Monday whether to go ahead with clustered delivery.

Postal official Joseph Breckenridge said he was surprised by the reaction of the Mission Glen homeowners. “Many people have actually requested this,” he said of the clustered boxes.

He said they offer security because the boxes are locked.

Clustered delivery has been used in five developments in the Sylmar area without resistance but before buyers moved in, he said. Bad weather prevented early installation of the boxes at Mission Glen.

Breckenridge said that clustered delivery is voluntary and that Glenfed, the Encino development company that built the three- and four-bedroom homes, asked for it.

Jeffrey Stath, Glenfed’s project manager, said he thought he had no option when he signed up.

“They didn’t specify chapter and verse,” Stath said. “But they did say some type of cluster system was required.”

Breckenridge denied that.

“The Postal Service does not twist anybody’s arm,” Breckenridge said. “This is a tame organization. We give them the facts. We pitch it to them. And that’s where it ends.”