Lake Murray Postal Annex Service in Jeopardy? Meeting To Weigh Reaction

When postal customers ring the buzzer for service at the Lake Murray Boulevard post office annex, Eva Gill is the one who answers. But lately she’s had to deal with questions—about whether the annex will close.

“People are kind of confused about it,” said Gill, a 28-year Postal Service veteran, as she sold stamps and weighed parcels at the closetlike space at 6055 Lake Murray Blvd., just north of Dugan Avenue.

The confusion is the result of a yellow notice card sent residents in neighboring La Mesa areas that announced: “The RETAIL ONLY from the La Mesa Annex Post Office is being considered for consolidation into the La Mesa Finance Office.”

The card said a “postal representative” would be available from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday, May 10, “to meet with the La Mesa residents to discuss the potential discontinuance of the Retail from the La Mesa Annex Post Office.”

The visits will be at the La Mesa Post Office, which by a quirk is now at 10174 Austin Dr. in Spring Valley. Survey sheets also were available at the Lake Murray annex. (See attached.)

The notice prompted two San Carlos residents to start a save-the-office movement, saying the annex should stay “open to prevent the adverse impact its closing would impose on our San Carlos neighborhood.”

So the annex is closing after only four years of customer service?

Not so fast, says Don Smeraldi, a U.S. Postal Service spokesman.

“The facility was built and intended as a carrier annex, so the carriers would not be impacted,” Smeraldi said by email last week. “We are gathering data to see if it would be feasible to discontinue retail services (the single retail terminal) at the annex.”

As part of the process, he said, the Postal Service considers “retail access availability in the surrounding area. There are six or seven retail locations within a three-mile radius of the annex. In addition, many banks, grocery stores, ATMs and other expanded access locations offer stamps, which is the primary product purchased at our retail offices.”

He said there is “no set date” for a possible close of the customer service window, since “we are still in the process of gathering data.”

He said a final verdict can’t be made until the “discontinuance proposal” is approved by U.S. Postal Service Headquarters in Washington. 

Tuesday’s meeting provides for community feedback, Smeraldi said. 

“If it is decided locally that the discontinuance proposal will go forward, and then it is approved by our headquarters, the community would receive notification of the impending action,” he said.

Would another annex be opened in northwest La Mesa?

“No other carrier annexes or retail offices are planned for this area at this time,” he said.  

Tammy Vielguth is the acting postmaster, “or what we call the officer in charge,” of the 91941/91942 area handled by the La Mesa Post Office, he said. 

If the annex closes, it won’t be for lack of support.

On April 28, Jack and Janet Britt of Spruce Lake Avenue less than a mile away in San Diego said they notified the Consumer Affairs Office by email and alerted 50 San Carlos neighbors, asking them to protest the possible shutdown of the retail window.

“Today at the La Mesa Annex on Lake Murray [Boulevard] we met ... a La Mesa resident who received the public hearing notice concerning the planned closing of the annex, but those of us who reside in San Carlos on the La Mesa border and who live a few blocks from the annex were not notified,” the Britts wrote.

They complained that Tuesday’s meeting had been scheduled at a post office branch “over 7 miles away from the people who use the annex, including a large number of San Carlos residents.”

“We would appreciate your accepting this email as our formal protest of the annex closing and urge you instead to consider reducing hours and/or days of operation if necessary.”