STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

It’s a Christmas miracle! A New Year’s Hallelujah with an exclamation point!

Ketchum residents no longer have to pay for local post office boxes!

Unfortunately, residents still have to expend gas money and pollute the air to get their mail each day as the city is still bereft of home delivery. And they’ll still have to fight with online shippers who don’t  accept P.O. Box numbers.

But it’ll take some of the burden off of Ketchum residents and those living in North Blaine County as Post boxes cost between $75 and $216 a year, with prices having tripled in the past seven years

Officials from the City of Ketchum have been working with Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, and Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, to get a P.O. Box fee exemption for years. U.S. Postal Service regulations contend that post addresses to which mail delivery is unavailable should qualify for a free P.O. Box.

Retired Ketchum postmaster John McDonald long resisted any attempt to go to home delivery, even after Hailey Post Office introduced home delivery about 20 years ago. Never mind that USA Today wrote a big front-page article lauding the fact that home delivery had finally being restored to the Ninth Ward of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

The poor people of the Ninth Ward will no longer be in the backwaters but have home delivery like everyone else in the United States, the article waxed poetically.

Ketchum Mayor Neil Bradshaw said those with Ketchum post office boxes will be getting a flier in the mail that will explain how to apply for a free post office box.

“I want to thank the tireless efforts of our city council, the offices of Sen. Mike Crapo and Rep. Mike Simpson, and Ketchum postmaster Shannon Ferraro for making this happen,” he added.