A tiny Alaska post office runs out of a cabin, and the state wants to keep it

At the Skwentna airport, a fly-in community off the road system, the U.S. post office shares a building with someone's rec room. It operates on the main floor of a private cabin; the second floor is authorized for storage and, per the lease, recreational use.

The state wants to keep it that way. Alaska's transportation department is proposing to extend the lease that lets Steven and Bonnie Childs run the post office out of their cabin on state airport land. The five-year extension would cost them $1,103 a year for the roughly 7,500-square-foot site on the west side of the airport.

For Skwentna, a community designated for Essential Air Service, that cabin is the post office. If the lease weren't renewed, program rules would require the Childs to haul away their own building and everything else on the land, at their own expense.

The department's rural airport leasing program requires a 30-day public comment window before it acts.