Home Mail Delivery to Be Debated Tonight

How far should the mail go? Some residents of this small beach community say all the way to their front doors.

A call for home delivery will be debated at a community association meeting tonight. Sunset Beach and parts of Silverado Canyon are the only Orange County communities where residents have to pick up their mail at the post office.

Local postmaster Dick Deyarmond said that, even if residents decide to request home delivery, the change requires approval from U.S. Postal Service officials in Washington.

“It could be a lengthy process,” Deyarmond said. “It’s not something that happens overnight.”

Residents in favor of home delivery say limited parking and heavy traffic at the small Pacific Coast Highway post office make it unnecessarily inconvenient to get mail.

“We have no choice,” Mills said. “We have to pay $8 a year to get mail to come to the post office and not to our home. It’s the principle of the thing that I object to.”

Home delivery opponents, however, say they do not want to threaten the small-town atmosphere provided by the 1,300-square-foot post office, where neighbors often stop and talk.

If home delivery were offered, the postal branch might be closed, said Phyllis Maywhort, past president of the Sunset Beach Community Assn.

“I do not want my mail in a cluster box,” Maywhort said. “I might be willing to talk if they will deliver the mail to my door, but that’s not the way it would be.”

Maywhort said residents are equally concerned about the county’s efforts to install parking meters in Sunset Beach, another topic for tonight’s meeting. County officials will discuss the plan, which residents say would eliminate all free parking for visitors and employees.