The problems at the Wake Forest Post Office apparently stem from the oversight and management decisions – or lack thereof – at the regional Greensboro office or even higher up.
There are several indications this conclusion is correct, beginning with the Wake Forest Post Office building itself. It was built in 1988 when the town had 5,534 souls with about the same number outside of town but within the 27587 delivery area. The estimated numbers for the town and the postal delivery area today are 41,157 for the town and probably the same for the unincorporated areas nearby.
In 1988 Rolesville had well under 1,000 people – even in 2003 the population was estimated at 938 – and a post office so small two people and the postmaster made a crowd. Today it has a new post office on Rogers Road and the town’s planning department estimates its population at 6,200.
No one seems to remember when the U.S. Postal Service moved the Rolesville carriers to the Wake Forest office, but the building – 15,308 square feet on 5 acres – has never been expanded. As long as Rolesville’s growth was slow, the building was adequate. But that town’s growth has almost exploded in the last eight years at the same time Wake Forest and all the new outlying subdivisions experienced rapid but not explosive growth.
The tipping point may have been the Greensboro decision to move the Youngsville carriers to Wake Forest to increase efficiency. Many wondered how it could be more efficient and why they were leaving an almost-new post office. We did not question how well the building could handle a number of new carriers added to those delivering to Wake Forest, Rolesville and the rest of the 27587 area.
Wake Forest Postmaster John Thompson answered questions about the parking lot expansion at the time. There were no announcements when the Youngsville carriers were moved back to Youngsville, probably in 2015, and it is not clear when Thompson left because of retirement, resignation or dismissal. The Greensboro office has not answered questions about him.
It is obvious there was a hemorrhage in the ranks of carriers if there were 20 open permanent positions among the carriers for the 42 routes in the sprawling 27587 ZIP Code area. Eleven of those positions have been filled and more hiring is on the way, the Greensboro office said last week in response to questions. (Those answers were received by the Gazette at 3:58 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon just as the editor was about to put the paper online making it impossible to analyze the answers last week.)
It was disingenuous of David Webster, the Greensboro district manager, to the district office to say: “Immediately upon learning of these issues, we initiated evaluations of our delivery routes and carrier volume in the Wake Forest/Rolesville area . . . We found there has been a rebound in the housing market and tremendous growth in this area over the past two years.” Was there no feedback from Wake Forest about growth over more than two years? Or was that feedback ignored?
We understand there has been a very large increase in packages flowing through the USPS offices nationwide because of online purchasing. We hope that in the future the Wake Forest and Rolesville post offices will be allowed to hire additional mail sorters, package deliverers and couriers for the holiday season who can be given some training on the routes they are to help with. Simply bringing in carriers who have already put in a full day delivering mail in Raleigh for after-hours deliveries here is not a satisfactory way to make sure the mail is delivered in a timely and accurate fashion.
3 Responses
If you think WF is bad – I go there instead of Youngsville (where I live) because they are 300x worse. Neighbor & I did an experiment it took 8 BUSINESS days to get a card from PO to mailbox… Mail Carrier is rude & has destroyed mail or misplaced for week +. All logged with Youngsville PO which probably why it keeps getting worse.
It has been my theory for some time now with all the exploding in population that the PO cannot possibly keep up. I figured they were short staffed, always has been, so when the towns grow, the PO staff didn’t or couldn’t keep up. I hope it’s fixed soon!! We still need services of the PO.
No one should be surprised by this. The USPS has been a political target for decades, over-managed and mismanaged by Congress. That facilities and routes are now suffering is the only possible result. Get used to less service. It will soon be occurring across many federal departments as budgets and staff are cut.