A ticked-off Boston City Council voted to issue a “rare” subpoena to compel testimony from the local postmaster at next month’s hearing on late mail concerns after the U.S. Postal Service blew off the body’s request to appear at the last one.

The City Council voted 11-1 to approve an order for a summons for USPS Boston Postmaster Joshua Balcunas to appear before the body’s Committee on PILOT Agreements, Institutional, and Intergovernmental Relations at a hearing that has been scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 13.

The Council order, filed by Sharon Durkan and Liz Breadon, notes that Balcunas was “invited to testify” at the first hearing held last week on “inadequate delivery services” by the USPS in Boston neighborhoods, but he “declined the invitation.”

“As the chair of the committee, we were very disappointed not to have a complete conversation,” Breadon said at last week’s City Council meeting. “It would be so much more effective if the representatives of management from the Postal Service had been available to answer our questions directly.”

“This is not a trivial issue,” Breadon added. “This is a very serious issue, and I would hope that the Postal Service would respond to our concerns in a timely way and actually turn up so we could talk to them.”

The USPS, per internal emails Durkan cited and said were “accidentally” forwarded to the Council, opted to blow off the body’s invitation to testify at last Tuesday’s hearing because it saw the Council as having a “political agenda” in elevating the issue, and not being “so much about customers.”

The hearing was prompted by concerns a number of councilors reported hearing from residents and businesses about late mail — including bills, checks and prescriptions — and the impact those USPS service failures could have on mail-in voting in next month’s state and federal elections.

“The response (from USPS) was basically a dare: We won’t show up without a subpoena,” Councilor Benjamin Weber said. “So, here we are. We’re going to issue a subpoena.”

Weber noted that it was a “fairly rare occurrence” for the Council to use its subpoena power.

City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune said that while the subpoena authority has not been used in recent years, or by this iteration of the Council, it’s not a “novel” concept, in that the body has flexed that muscle on prior occasions.

The City Council’s “power to summons and subpoena” residents, effectively treating them like witnesses compelled to testify in court who are subject to the same fines and penalties for defaults, is enshrined in state law and among its strongest tools.

The subpoena authority is spelled out in both the Boston City Charter and City Council rules.

“A little respect from the USPS would be very much welcomed, and in the event that they decline to actually come and appear before us, I would expect that we would get our answers in writing and some serious conversation,” Breadon said. “We are hearing firsthand from our constituents that there’s a problem, and we’re trying to address this as their representatives.”

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The USPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. In a prior statement to the Herald, a USPS spokesperson said mail service in Boston is “current and within performance standards,” and added that a “minor employee availability” issue that occurred in the area last month has since been resolved.

City Councilor Ed Flynn was the matter’s lone ‘no’ vote. He raised concerns about whether it was legal for a local Council to subpoena a federal official, and the precedent he felt the vote may set, when city officials decline to testify at future hearings.

“Does it set a precedent that now we’re able to use this power that we do have unilaterally and to ensure that if people don’t show up that are invited, that we use the subpoena to get them there?” Flynn said.

Flynn, who has expressed frustrations with a hearing he called on late school buses being delayed due to Boston Public School representatives’ inability to testify on an earlier requested date, said there should be consistency in City Council actions.

“I think if we do it for one,” Flynn said of the subpoena, “we should do it for all.”

Postal trucks lines up at the United States Post Office annex in Boston.(Staff Photo By Matt Stone/Boston Herald, File)