Concern struck Big Sky during Community Week when Al Malinowski announced a plan to end Gallatin Partners’ contract with the United States Postal Service, ending their 21-year management of the Big Sky Post Office without a plan for mail service after Feb. 28, 2023.
Malinowski, president of Gallatin Partners, hopes USPS will recognize the ongoing challenge and step in to operate a federal service in Big Sky, providing the resources and scale this growing community needs.
Efforts to reach the USPS for comment by press time were unsuccessful.
Big Sky’s postal service has always been operated on a contract basis with USPS. In 2001, Gallatin Partners took over the contract from the Big Sky Owners Association, who had been serving roughly 1,000 mailboxes in their present-day ground floor office. Having seen growth and planning for more, Gallatin Partners made an ambitious bid to USPS for a $199,000 annual contract to upgrade to a 4,000 square foot facility. The bid was rejected, and USPS funded a 2,500 square foot facility, where Gallatin Partners began operating in 2002.
After two decades, Big Sky has nearly tripled in size, and the space and technology constraints provided in the USPS contract have made it increasingly difficult to keep up with that growth, leading Gallatin Partners to decide it was time for a change.