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STEVE THOMPSONMittie Mitchell has rented a mail box since 1965. A postal official says a refund is possible.
LACOOCHEE - The area around Coit Street has the look of a place that's been long forgotten.
Many homes in the neighborhood seem like remnants from another era. Roads here remain unpaved. Some intersections lack stop signs. And at the end of each driveway, something else is missing:
Mailboxes.
Mittie Mitchell has lived on Coit Street since 1965. To get her mail, she pays an annual fee to rent a box at the nearby Lacoochee Post Office.
It never occurred to her, she said recently, that all these years she has been paying for something most other Americans get for free.
"It never crossed my mind," said the 81-year-old. "I'm so used to paying for everything I get."
But under U.S. Postal Service regulations, it seems that Mitchell should have been able to get a free post office box all along.
"Everybody is entitled to one form of free delivery or another," said Postal Service spokesman Gary Sawtelle after being asked why many Lacoochee residents have to pay to get their mail.
"It's possible that they'll be entitled to a refund."
Although it gets no tax money, federal laws grant the Postal Service privileges that private carriers don't enjoy, Sawtelle said. These include exclusive access to the nation's mailboxes.
Because of such built-in competitive advantages, Sawtelle said, everyone is entitled to free mail delivery.
"Part of the trade-off," he said, "is we are obligated to go everywhere for the same price."
Postal officials are investigating to find out who in Pasco County doesn't get mail delivered to their homes and thus are entitled to a free Post Office box - and a possible refund of any fees they've already paid to rent one.
The Lacoochee Post Office is one of several in Pasco County that do not have mail carriers. Other "non-delivery" post offices in Pasco include Trilby, St. Leo, Crystal Springs and Elfers. Many people in these areas get mail delivery from neighboring post offices, but some do not.
Eddie Garza, of Beaver Road in Trilby, has been paying for a box at the Trilby Post Office for eight years.
"It goes up every year," Garza said of the fees. The postal service does not deliver to his street.
The Dade City post office delivers to much of northeast Pasco, but postal regulations restrict it from delivering to within a quarter mile of the Lacoochee and Trilby post offices, said Dade City's postmaster, Jeffrey Alston.
Not all post offices appear to follow this regulation. The New Port Richey Post Office delivers throughout the Elfers Post Office area, according to a postal clerk at the Elfers Post Office.
Shirley Marsee, who retired as postmaster in May after 37 years at the Lacoochee Post Office, said that the money the Lacoochee Post Office earns for its 900 post office boxes is an important part of its revenue.
Requiring free boxes, she said, "could shut down a lot of little post offices."
But Sawtelle said post offices are not in any danger of being closed.
"While revenue doesn't dictate whether we have a post office open or not," he said, "it does have something to do with how much the postmaster gets paid."
Revenue is only one of several factors considered in determining what a postmaster's salary is, Sawtelle said.
Postal officials are investigating to find out who in Pasco County doesn't get mail delivered to their homes and thus are entitled to a free Post Office box - and a possible refund of any fees they've already paid to rent one.
Mitchell paid $26 this year for her Post Office box. It's about half the size of a typical streetside mailbox. She could have gotten a smaller box for $18, but she likes the extra room.
"It's a big enough box to where if I get sick or something like that," she said. "They can put two days of mail in there."
She has had the same box since 1965, when she paid $6 for it.
A refund for all those years would amount to hundreds of dollars. But Mitchell, who lives on her monthly $588 Social Security check, doubts she'll ever see it.
"No chance," she said. "But let's hope they fool me."