Highland Beach resident Marlynn Wilson-Donaldson walks through the door of the Highland Beach
Post Office with several packages to mail for the holidays.
Rosalind Loomis, left, selects the best box to mail her holiday gifts.
Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Rich Pollack
Want to avoid the predictable madhouse when you get ready to mail your cards and packages this holiday season?
If so, you’ll want to escape to the little post office operated by the town of Highland Beach — if you can find it, that is.
“We’ve had residents who have lived in town for 15 years who come in and tell us they didn’t know a post office was here,” says Valerie Jacoby, the lead postal clerk and this post office’s only full-time employee.
Tucked behind Highland Beach’s Town Hall on South Ocean Boulevard, the community post office is one of only a few in Florida run by a town and the only one in the area.
Operated at a cost to Highland Beach taxpayers of about $125,000 a year, minus the $25,000 the U.S. Postal Service pays the town to run it, the station is a hidden gem — a throwback to small-town post offices where the clerks know you by name and help you any way they can.
“There’s always a smile — and sometimes a story,” says Lou Stern, a town commissioner who stops by the post office at least three times a week to buy stamps or mail a package.
Opened on Dec. 1, 1964, the post office has withstood Town Hall renovations and survived tough times when town officials were looking to trim costs. It has remained open for almost half a century mainly because it is an amenity that residents — and even a few customers from other communities — don’t want to ever see go away.
“It’s really important to the people who live here,” Stern says. “They enjoy the convenience of having a post office within a couple of miles of their home.”
Ease and customer service, Stern says, are the cornerstones of the post office, where you’ll find specialty stamps that might no longer be available at other post offices and where you won’t see the long lines you might see at bigger stations.
“If I go to another post office, especially during the holidays, there’s always a line,” Stern says. “Here, there is almost never a line, and if there is one, it’s usually not very long.”
Jacoby, who has been working at the Highland Beach post office for almost 14 years, says that on the busiest days — during the holidays and tax season — the post office will serve as many as 300 customers between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. On a normal day in the winter season, the post office will see between 100 and 150 customers a day.
With Jacoby and two part-time clerks — Bob Wesson and Bill Miller — behind the counter, the post office is where customers will get advice on what packaging to use and how to best save money on their mailings. During slow times customers will also get help sealing up packaging and sealing their parcels and getting them ready to be shipped.
“We are representatives of the town of Highland Beach,” Jacoby says. “We’ll go above and beyond to help our customers.”
Hints for surviving the holiday mailing rush:
Avoid Monday and Dec. 16, expected to be the busiest mailing days of the holiday season.
Have your mailing boxes picked out in advance and your packages wrapped and ready to go.
Remember that Mondays and Fridays are the busiest days at the Highland Beach Post office, which is closed on Saturdays.
Late mornings or early afternoons are usually the best times to visit the post office.
Remember to mail packages being sent by standard mail before Dec. 14 if you want them to get there on time for Christmas.
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