Residents who choose to mail in tax payments, voter correspondence or any other time sensitive information to  the town should be aware of a new change from the United States Postal Service.

As of a August 2025 change, most letters will no longer be postmarked on the day the letter is received by a post office but instead postmarked a day later when the letter is processed at a regional mail processing facility.

What does this mean in practical terms? According to an example provided by WisLawNow:

Mail sent Monday through Friday at a non-regional processing facility post office won’t be postmarked until the next day. Mail sent on a Saturday won’t be collected until Monday morning, and it won’t be scanned until Monday afternoon or evening, so the postmark will be two days after it was sent. If a piece is sent on a Saturday before a Monday holiday, it may not be collected, processed and postmarked until Tuesday — a gap of three days.

We called the Grafton Post Office about this today to find out local specifics. Mail dropped off at the Grafton Post Office will likely be postmarked the same day, but it will not be postmarked Grafton: it will be posted from our nearest processing facility, which is Milwaukee.

However, depending on the time of drop off and day of the week, you may still find that the postmark is not the day you dropped it off, but rather the day it is received in the processing facility.

If the postmark date is critical to whatever you are mailing, it is better to err on the side of caution and mail items early rather than to assume the postmark will reflect the day you dropped it off. Tax items that are received late will be considered delinquent if postmarked after the due date.