Hinesburg resident Michael Sorce has not gotten any mail in the past two weeks.
“We’re not getting our bills. We’re not getting our payments, and we’re not getting our medication,” said Sorce, whose business, Dark Star Productions, is minutes from the post office on Commerce Street.
Selectboard Chair Merrily Lovell said the situation in Hinesburg is the worst it’s been since the pandemic, and she is expecting to discuss the issue at Wednesday’s meeting.
“There are people in Hinesburg who depend on the daily mail for prescriptions, and they’re not getting them,” she said. “And we, as a municipal organization, depend on the mail.”
“It’s just totally undependable,” said Lovell, who has been receiving her own mail once a week. “And you can’t depend that the outgoing mail will be picked up either.”
She is particularly concerned about whether residents will get the annual town report and mail-in ballots on time. “So to me, it’s a really big issue that needs to be addressed.”
The Hinesburg post office was open but quiet Tuesday morning, where at least two residents said they were facing delays and had come to pick up their mail. Post office staff deferred questions to Steve Doherty, the regional U.S. Postal Service spokesperson.
“I’m not aware of any address that would have gone for two weeks without mail,” Doherty said. “A customer experiencing that length of a delay should reach out to our Customer Service Center at 800-275-8777 so they can identify the cause.”
From sporadic delivery around the holidays to politicians calling out the postmaster general, postal problems have plagued Vermont since the pandemic.
Like many other industries, the postal service continues to face a major shortage of postal workers nationwide. The situation is no different in Vermont. A search for available jobs online shows 82 vacancies today, including a rural carrier position in Hinesburg.
“While we are aggressively hiring across Vermont, with the unemployment rate in the state currently at 2.5%, we’re not seeing the numbers we’d like to at our hiring events,” Doherty said.
Despite the problems, the postal service is working to make sure all communities can be serviced equally, according to Doherty, who said this includes authorizing overtime, realigning personnel, and delivering before or after regular hours and on Sundays as needed.
“We’re typically able to move personnel from a neighboring community to backfill a temporary absence due to vacation or illness,” he said. “However, with the same hiring difficulties occurring across the state, that flexibility has been stretched to its limit.”
The situation seems particularly bad in Hinesburg, said Lovell, who has spoken with postal workers who are burned out from working long hours.
Other residents acknowledged the recent delays in mail delivery but seemed to be understanding.
“It’s a staffing issue and there’s not a whole lot you can do about it,” said Brian McLaggan, a local resident who spoke highly about the postal workers. “It’s a difficult time and it’s hard to find qualified people,” he said.
The mail service has been “extremely erratic” at the local library, according to Beth Royer, library director. Employees usually get their paper paychecks in the mail on Wednesdays but last week’s came in today, Royer said.
Mail delivery has been particularly patchy in the last six months, though it hasn’t affected library services, said Royer, whose father was a postal worker and who is sympathetic to the plight of the stretched postal service.
Delivery to the town hall has been “fairly normal with an occasional missed day here and there,” said Melissa Ross, town clerk and treasurer. “There has been no noticeable impact on town business other than us not getting mail on a daily basis.”
Meanwhile, complaints abound on Hinesburg’s Front Porch Forum, according to Lovell, who has written a memo to the selectboard to reach out to the state’s congressional delegation for help.
“It’s the basis of our democracy that we have daily mail services. All my life that has been taken for granted so yes, I’m pretty upset,” she said.