10,000 Contacted, 4 Show Up for Meeting on Postal Annex Closure

More than 10,000 households in the 91942 ZIP code received notice last month that the Lake Murray Boulevard postal annex might shutter its customer service window. A yellow card invited residents to meet with postal reps on the issue from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Spring Valley Post Office.

So who showed up?

In the first three hours: Helen Dalton and three others.

The first three had left before 12:30 p.m., but Dalton lingered to express her thoughts to Ken Boyd, a local manager for consumer affairs, and acting Postmaster Tammy Vielguth.

“As soon as I got the notice, I [decided] I was going to be here come hell or high water,” said Dalton, a retired phone company worker who says she uses the Lake Murray annex “all the time for everything.”

Dalton said she knew three of the postal employees there by name, “and they know me.” Earlier, she urged the officials to keep the window open for retail business.

But Boyd, explaining some of the economics of the industry and the reasons why the annex closure is being considered, told Dalton: “We apologize. We can’t have a post office on every corner anymore.”

He said a closure decision would rely on factors including expenses, workload, type of workload and proximity of other post offices. Stamps can be bought many ways and through many outlets, including online, at Costco and via Stamps by Mail, he noted.

Dalton, who saw AT&T go through pains from the move to cell phones from landlines, was sympathetic to the Postal Service’s plight; Boyd said USPS had gone from 800,000 employees to 550,000, and its first-class mail volume has declined 40 percent in recent years.

But Dalton said: “I understand the answers they’re giving me. Same with the phone company.”

The Spring Valley Post Office on Austin Drive had been prepared for a flood of customers—but only three chairs were needed in the lobby, and the snacks and water bottles stockpiled in another office weren’t really needed in the first several hours.

Boyd said a decision on whether the local postal district—including San Diego, Imperial, San Bernardino and Riverside County—will recommend a closure to Washington headquarters might be a month away, with a final decision perhaps 4½ to 5½ months off.

However, the nearby San Carlos neighborhood, whose residents also use the Lake Murray postal annex, were not sent notices of the closure possibility, Boyd confirmed, and weren’t considered for such alerts.

But he noted that a poster and questionnaires about the possible annex closure had been on display in that post office’s lobby for 30 days.

Vielguth said she had been acting postmaster for seven months, but Boyd couldn’t say whether she would eventually get the permanent job.

She said questionnaires have been turned over to her office on the annex use, “but we haven’t counted them.”

Boyd said similar shutdowns are being discussed with residents in the Riverside County town of La Sierra and the San Bernardino burg of Bryn Mawr. He wouldn’t say where else in San Diego County such closures are in the works.

Said Boyd: “Are there others being considered? Sure.”