Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night shall keep the mail from its destination, the old U.S. Postal Service adage goes.

But, when the rotten leg beneath one of Columbia’s shared mailboxes finally gave out, postal carriers stopped coming to Firefly Way.

Residents on the cul-de-sac, including Bill Dragovich, wondered what to do. For weeks, they hoofed it several miles every day to retrieve their mail from the post office. He struggled to get an answer about where the street’s mailbox had disappeared to after keeling over — and whether or when it would be replaced.

“It should be so simple,” Dragovich said. “Why are they putting the onus on us?”

Here in the meticulously planned development, where thousands of federal civil servants have settled due to its proximity to Washington, D.C., Columbia’s distinctive cluster mailboxes are at the center of a bureaucratic snarl.

The Howard County community founded in 1967 was first in the country to adopt multihousehold “cluster” boxes. Most of Columbia’s single-family detached lots were about 8 to 12 feet wider than the maximum allowed by postal regulations, so developers negotiated with the postmaster general to install cluster boxes. The experiment saved the independent federal agency money and complemented developer James Rouse’s vision of an aesthetically pleasing and socially progressive community.

More than 50 years later, cluster boxes are common in communities across the country.

In Columbia, however, they remain entwined with the town’s identity, a symbol of Rouse’s utopian vision in which even the daily post is designed to bring people together. Residents describe using the gray, metal lockers as a neighborhood watercooler where one might strike up chats, post fliers for coming yard sales or meet for a walk with the dogs.

Many of Columbia’s cluster boxes are aging. Some have warped and rusted after years of exposure to the elements. Others have deteriorated to the point of falling over.

Toppled boxes have sent Columbians, village managers and elected leaders on a dizzying quest to figure out who’s responsible for repairing or replacing them.

When Dana Lang spotted a traffic cone sitting where her cluster box used to be, she snapped a photo and sent it to her husband. A laminated sign stuck to the neon cone offered a clue: “Mail Box Damaged The mail is available for pickup at the Columbia Post Office.”

A few houses over, another cluster box hit the dirt this year. Resident Carlos Cysneiros said he was certain it wasn’t the neighborhood’s job to replace it.

“What are we gonna do?” Cysneiros asked. “It’s a federal offense to touch it.”

Homeowners in villages such as Long Reach, Dorsey’s Search and Hickory Ridge report receiving confusing or contradictory answers from authorities.

Postal Service policy states it’s the customer’s responsibility to purchase, install and maintain mail receptacles, Mark Lawrence, a spokesperson for the agency’s Atlantic region, said in an email.

Au contraire, the Columbia Association said. The quasi-governmental homeowners association routinely instructs residents that the cluster mailboxes fall under the Postal Service’s purview.

The dispute between local and federal authorities came to a head in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. A mailbox in the Columbia village of Kings Contrivance needed maintenance, but village staff struggled to find accurate information.

“There was no plan to replace it because of this brouhaha over who owns it,” village manager Beverley Meyers said.

To complicate matters, post offices in Ellicott City and Jessup also served portions of Columbia. Local leaders contacted state and federal lawmakers for help untangling the bureaucracy.

In a written notice dated Feb. 3, 2021, the Postal Service acknowledged it owns the cluster boxes in Columbia’s single-family neighborhoods and is required to maintain them.

Yet the notice also said budget constraints severely limited the agency’s ability to replace equipment.

For decades, the Postal Service has been largely self-funded. However, the agency accumulated $87 billion in losses from 2007-20, according to the Associated Press.

In that 2021 notice to Columbia, the Postal Service welcomed Columbia residents to “crowdsource, fundraise, or come up with other ways to privately acquire” the minimum $1,400 price tag for a new box.

“USPS has no money for addressing aesthetic issues with cluster mailboxes,” the notice states. “Therefore, the USPS current policy for cluster boxes is to repair, not to replace them. If the boxes cannot be repaired, they will be replaced with an old box, not a new one.”

Long Reach resident Lowell Sunderland doesn’t think it would take $1,400 to fix his cluster box, which he estimates is nearly 50 years old. The concrete underneath it is beginning to break down.

He called the post office and offered to fix it with a $1.50 bag of concrete mix.

“No, you can’t do that; it’s federal property,” Sunderland recalled being told.

Some Columbia residents with troublesome cluster boxes hesitated to discuss the issue openly, citing fears that it would jeopardize their chances of resolving the issue. Others said criticizing the Postal Service seemed politically risky.

Howard County is home to an estimated 50,000 federal workers at a time when President Donald Trump’s administration is working to dramatically scale back the size of the government. The ongoing federal shutdown also furloughed some residents.

Instead, Howard County leaders are hearing from their Columbia constituents. Councilmember Liz Walsh’s team fielded questions in August concerning a particularly wobbly cluster box on Manorhill Lane with a top that is beginning to warp. On rainy days, some mail arrives damp, one resident told her.

“We’re at a loss,” Walsh said. “It doesn’t feel good to tell a constituent that you can’t help.”

On Firefly Way, the cluster box suddenly reappeared last week — and with it the daily mail.

“It’s back, though maybe we need a tetanus shot to get the mail,” resident Jeanne Longford said.

The box had a new leg but otherwise looked much as it did before with its rust spots and a peeling sticker declaring it a federal offense to deface.

Better to have the old box, Dragovich said, than none at all.

This article has been updated to correct the name of Firefly Way in a photo caption.