Stimulus saves RI folks from hazardous mailboxes

PORTSMOUTH — They had already ‘stimulated’ Bristol Ferry Road’s sidewalks and curbs, and this week workers addressed one last issue on that busy Portsmouth road — the mailboxes.

From one end to the other, old and often battered mailboxes were uprooted and replaced with black Postal Service-approved models.

It went fairly well Monday until the crews reached one woman’s house.

“If you take my mailbox, I’ll sue you,” said the woman who later contacted the Times but asked not to be identified. “I think they could tell that I meant it because they left.”

She objected, she said, on a couple counts.

“Mine is a good sturdy one, I like it and I don’t want them to replace it with something flimsy,” she said. “They didn’t even ask — can they do that?”

She said she called the Post Office to find out what they knew. The Portsmouth postmaster had heard nothing about it.

Nor had Town Administrator Robert Driscoll who said he would check on it.

Reached by phone later that day, state Department of Transportation spokesman Charles St. Martin said the contractor, Narragansett Improvement Co., was only doing the federal government’s bidding.

“We are supposed to replace mailboxes with ones that meet safety specifications,” Mr. St. Martin said.

The mailbox replacement, he said, is a final step in the 100 percent federally funded stimulus project that involved sidewalk, curb and drainage work along the four-lane road.