PORTLAND – Some Peaks Island residents are resisting an order by the postmaster to move their mailboxes to new locations to make mail delivery more efficient and safer for mail carriers.

Michael Fortunato has asked many mail customers to move their mailboxes from their houses to the edge of the street or from one side of the street to the other. Some residents have been asked to group their mailboxes at the end of a street.

While most residents agreed to the change – especially when offered new mailboxes free of charge – others weren’t so agreeable, Fortunato said.

Suellen Roberts, for one, says she has no intention of moving her box from in front of her house to the other side of Alderbrook Road, one of many narrow, unpaved streets on Peaks Island.

Roberts doesn’t have a physical disability preventing her from walking 15 feet to the other side of the street. But she opposes the move on principle, and because the former postmaster said she could put her mailbox where it is today.

“I already have a perfectly good box in front of my house,” said Roberts, who has lived on Peaks for nine years. “They want me to move it just for him to not take two minutes to get out of his truck.”

Fortunato says every minute counts in the postal service’s quest to become more efficient. Four years ago, he started streamlining delivery routes throughout his district, which includes Portland and its islands, South Portland, Cape Elizabeth, Scarborough, Westbrook, Falmouth and Cumberland Foreside.

At the same time, Fortunato says, he’s trying to make delivery safer for his carriers by changing the way mail is delivered in some neighborhoods. Recurring problems include hard-to-reach mailboxes, dangerous road and walkway conditions, a lack of house numbers and street signs, and vicious dogs.

Fortunato set his sights on Peaks Island last summer by sending a letter to customers and holding a public meeting in August. When some residents balked at the proposed changes, he started visiting individual customers to reach compromise solutions.

He managed to ease the concerns of 97-year-old Veronica Foster when he proposed moving her mailbox to the other side of the road from its current spot, attached to her front steps. Those steps are at the crest of a steep, 60-foot-long grass path that leads to her house. On icy winter days, the path becomes a virtual bobsled run.

They worked out a compromise so the Peaks Island carrier will continue to deliver mail to Foster’s house as long as the path is safe. On icy days, he will deliver it to a box at the foot of her path, where a neighbor can pick it up for her if she’s expecting something important.

“We talked it out,” Foster said. “I wouldn’t expect anybody to risk getting hurt coming up the path if it’s not safe.”

Roberts says she will collect her mail at the island’s postal station if the carrier refuses to deliver to her mailbox in its present location. Fortunato says she can do that for a month, but then she’ll have to forward her mail to a post-office box or some other address.

Roberts, though, says will take her fight to postal officials in Washington, D.C.

“It seems to me,” she said, “they should be willing to make a slight alteration to give us better service.”