Council seeks to corral Postal Service’s site search

The U.S. Postal Service hopes to begin advertising later this month to buy land for a new post office site in Ketchum.

Ketchum’s growing population and subsequent demand for services has outstripped the size of the current building.

At a meeting Monday, the Ketchum City Council set boundaries within which council members are asking the Postal Service to confine its search.

In a memo to the mayor and city council, city administrator Jim Jaquet described an Aug. 12 meeting in which a U.S. Postal Service official brought Mayor Guy Coles and Council Members Randy Hall and Chris Potters up to date on efforts to locate the new site.

According to Jaquet’s memo, Ed Bavoucet of the U.S. Postal Service office in Denver indicated that the Ketchum facility is at the top of the service’s regional "needs" list.

Bavoucet also said the service hoped to only find one facility, as opposed to having the retail and mailboxes at one site, and sorting at another.

At Monday night’s meeting, city council members emphasized that any new post office needed to be in a central location, preferably in the city’s core.

"My first choice is to keep it in its current location," said Councilman Randy Hall. "My second and third choices are to keep it in its current location."

In setting the boundaries within which the Postal Service can choose a site, the council designated the block on which the post office is located as its preferred location. The area of advertisement is west of Main Street, north of Rivers Street, east of Second Avenue, and south of Fifth Street.