The selectmen are not so eager to take an official stand on replacing private mailboxes that fall victim to snowplowing.
The town tends to regard mailbox damage as an inevitable result of snowplowing. In a harsh winter the roadsides can become lined with high banks of snow and ice previously pushed aside by plows. To clear the roads, plows have to launch the newer snow up and over the banks of older snow. This can require some speed. The town has also started buying plows that are higher at one end, which helps add height to the snow’s trajectory.
But if the snow is wet and heavy, launching it up and over a roadside snowbank can wipe out a mailbox — the plow doesn’t have to hit a mailbox to take it out.
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The homeowners who have to replace mailboxes don’t always share the town’s perspective on mailbox losses.
“People feel drivers aim for them,” Mr. Marconi said.
It isn’t standard practice to replace mailboxes.
“When you have a highway department that’s exhausted, and you tell them they have to go back and replace mailboxes — it’s tough,” Mr. Marconi said.
But the town has on occasion replaced them.
“We have, due to some resident being very, very passionate,” Mr. Marconi said.
The general practice is that if evidence points to a likelihood the mailbox was hit by a plow, the town steps in. If the mailbox appears simply to have been hit by thrown snow, then perhaps there was a problem with the mailbox — a rotted post, poor placement, the mailbox wasn’t well secured.
Mr. Marconi said some towns seek to protect themselves from responsibility for mailboxes damaged in snowplowing.
“There are towns that have passed ordinances,” he said.
Other members of the board didn’t show much enthusiasm for legislating a solution to the problem.
“I’d rather not tackle an ordinance,” Selectman Andy Bodner said.
“I’d rather not pay,” he added, “unless it’s hit by a plow.”