Residents in West Kildonan upset with two-tier mail delivery

WINNIPEG — It’s become the great divide between the “have” and the “have-nots” in West Kildonan.

One half of the area was switched to community mailboxes last year. The next section was set to be switched over in the coming weeks, however, on Monday that changed.

Residents with postal codes beginning with R2W will retain traditional door-to-door delivery; at least for the time being.

“I was pretty happy,” said resident Shel Zolkewich. “I do get a lot of mail. I think we can all use the excercise to walk to the community boxes, but it was  a nice treat to be excluded from the cut.”

Residents who found out their delivery system was not being switched over were breathing a sigh of relief on Tuesday.

“Thank god,” said Margaret Ekosky. “No seriously. I didn’t relish in the idea of having to go there and find my mailbox broken into. This is not the area you want to have community mailboxes.”

However, those who were forced to start using the group boxes last year are fuming.

“I think it sucks,” said Miriam Geller. “It’s not fair. They started with us first and now they aren’t going ahead with it anymore.”

Geller lives beside her community box and said the pathways aren’t properly cleared in the winter and is concerned someone is going to injury themselves.

“They don’t shovel right here and it gets slippery in the winter time,” she said. “You can break you neck.”

Councillor Ross Eadie agreed and said it’s not the first complaint he has heard from residents in his ward.

“The community mailboxes are taking parking spaces away from the neighbourhood where there is already not enough parking spaces,” said Eadie. “And in the winter it’s a problem because they only clear the snow in front of the community mailbox , they don’t clear it all around.”

Eadie’s mail delivery was switched to the group box system last year and he is pushing for door-to-door delivery to be fully restored to everyone who lost it.

“I would love it to go back to door-to-door service. I know they spent a lot of money to put these things in but they did it against peoples will.”