BUENA VISTA, Colo. (KDVR) — Residents in the small town of Buena Vista are fed up with USPS because their local office doesn’t have delivery services, so a P.O. Box is mandatory.

Well, those residents took to the streets Friday and Saturday protesting outside of their post office saying free mail delivery should be a service for them just like it is anywhere else. Two residents who were at the center of this fight were MaryAnn Uzelac and Grace Garret.

The upset residents were told this decision for non-delivery mail came from a survey taken 25 years ago showing that’s what people wanted. Those locals at the center of this fight have researched and said they can’t find any evidence the survey ever existed.

“It’s just an insult to me that they would make this false accusation claim, that they’re doing us a favor,” Uzelac said. “And then they keep raising the rates.”

Those rates have increased three times this year alone. They said it’s an issue with the basic box costing $166, and with almost 3,000 residents within city limits, the money adds up. Uzelac and Garret estimated the total is nearly $300,000 a year just for those P.O. Boxes.

Residents said those high prices aren’t worth the services provided either. There are long lines, lost mail, delayed packages, and just bottom line an overrun post office.

They’ve also cut back hours to Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“There are roughly five to 600 cars going to that post office just to pick up their mail as a routinely daily chore,” Uzelac said. “Then, just having half a dozen postal trucks going around town and delivering the mail, it just doesn’t make any sense.”

Garret said this isn’t the center of their concerns though. At the end of the day, they just want to have their mail delivered free of fees.

”We are not complaining about staffing, we have an issue with staffing. We don’t have enough people to process all of the mail because as a small town, we are more dependent than a normal post office on our mail delivery,” said Garret.