Postal progress

By Hannah Wever
Review Staff Writer
Published: July 10, 2008

Postal employees at the Somerset Post Office are processing parcels, packages and personal correspondence at a rate far higher than ever before. In addition to the postal influx and outflow of Somerset customers, the Somerset office is now serving the needs of customers whose mail has been diverted from Barboursville Post Office and recently, from Montpelier Station Post Office.
The Montpelier Station post office shut down and renovations began on the building, once a train station, May 28. With the building under construction, operations normally handled at Montpelier Station were moved to the Somerset Post Office.
In early May, Post Office Operations Mountain Area Manager Bobby Abernethy informed Montpelier Station postal customers that there would be a change in their service while their regular post office was being renovated.
“Montpelier Station Post Office customers can pick up their mail at Somerset Post Office, about four miles away,“ Abernethy said. As long as box holders used their regular post office box number and the 22957 Montpelier Station zip code, he added, the service would be “seamless.“
USPS Communications Coordinator Fran Sansone said it will likely be spring 2009 before the Montpelier Station Post Office reopens.
“We don’t expect to move back into those quarters before next March,“ Sansone said. “We will reoccupy the space when renovations are complete in approximately ten months.“
Meanwhile, in Barboursville, postal customers are still anticipating the delivery of a post office facility in their neighborhood.
Back in March of 2006, a notice was sent to Barboursville postal customers that the post office would be closing due to well contamination and septic system failure. Postal operations were subsequently moved to the Somerset Post Office, and have remained there ever since.
Negotiations between county government and USPS representatives have been ongoing in an effort to bring a post office back to the Barboursville community, but one deal after another fell through. Both parties attempted to secure deals to either renovate the existing building, or construct an entirely new building on an alternate site.
When the Barboursville Post Office closed in 2006, the Postal Service invited proposals to furnish rental space upon which a new, USPS-owned building could be placed. But later, the Orange County Board of Supervisors agreed to authorize the purchase-up to $100,000 for a modular unit that the Postal Service would then lease from the county and use for Barboursville’s postal operations.
By purchasing the unit and leasing it to the Postal Service, county officials hoped to address the community’s desire for a local post office, but expected neither to make nor lose their investment in the deal. County officials hoped to see the modular unit opened and serving customers by fall of 2007.
Orange County officials and United States Postal Service representatives have signed a lease agreement to put a Postal Service-owned post office modular building on county-owned land.
United States Postal Service Real Estate Specialist Paul Frye said the Postal Service expects to put a modular building on a site in front of the Barboursville Ruritan building this fall.
“The Postal Service is now saying there is going to be a post office (in Barboursville) at the end of September,“ Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairman Mark Johnson said. “I’m sort of beyond impatient at this point. I really don’t understand why it is taking so long.“