If you live in Vermont’s state capital, you still cannot buy stamps or ship a package with the U.S. Postal Service.
Despite the agency’s promises of a fully-functional Montpelier post office “before the summer months,” and a lease on a large retail space that started more than four months ago, the temporary office that finally opened in late July is a wide, unstaffed, mostly empty room with a row of P.O. boxes on the far wall.
Thirteen months after floodwaters devastated the city’s federal building at 87 State St., postal customers in Montpelier still have to drive to surrounding towns to access any USPS retail services.
“It’s incredibly disappointing. Honestly, it’s pathetic,” said Ben Doyle, the chairman of the Montpelier Commission for Recovery and Resilience.
The commission is an independent body set up shortly after the July 2023 floods to lead city renewal projects. Recovering a working post office for Montpelier has been one of its main objectives. It has been a long, torturous saga, according to Doyle, that continues to this day.
Postal Service employees worked out of postal trucks last year until Nov. 17. Since then, Vermont’s congressional delegation has repeatedly asked and even rallied for the return of a post office to the state capital. This January, some Montpelier residents were left without mail delivery, a situation made far worse without a physical location to pick up medicine or bills.
The one constant throughout, according to Doyle, has been the near-total lack of communication from the Postal Service.
“They’ve been completely unresponsive. These people have a responsibility to the taxpayer,” said Doyle.
In early spring, the Postal Service delivered a rare piece of good news. In an email dated March 29, USPS spokesperson Stephen Doherty wrote to Doyle’s commission announcing that he was “happy to report” that the agency had signed a lease for space inside 89 Main St., where they would open a replacement post office “providing full retail and Post Office Box service.”
The Postal Service’s occupancy began April 1, according to Doherty’s email, and the agency would begin work to install a “retail counter, safe, security features and IT infrastructure,” as well as P.O. boxes. The goal was to have a grand opening before summer, Doherty added, but he would update the commission “once we are far enough along to project a completion date.”
Neither of those things happened, according to Doyle. Instead, he said, “one day the door was just open,” with no heads-up to Montpelier’s commission.
“It’s a bunch of boxes. It’s not full retail postal service which was what they promised and what we’re entitled to,” Doyle said.
When a VTDigger reporter visited in early August, a radio in a corner of the room blasted Beatles songs over the wide, empty floor space. A few customers shuffled in to retrieve mail from the P.O. Box wall at the far end. At the door, a printed announcement told customers to pick up large packages or excess mail at the Berlin mall.
“We are still unable to provide any retail services. We will let you know when that has been put in,” the announcement read. “You may do any retail transactions at any other surrounding offices until then.”
The situation makes Doyle wonder what the Postal Service has been doing for the past four months.
“They’ve been paying the lease on that since April and it’s basically empty,” he said.
Reached by email, Doherty limited himself to confirming that the Postal Service had “relocated [their] PO Box Customers, who have been picking up their mail in Barre, to the new 89 Main Street location.”
He continued: “We are still working on the required buildout to open the retail counter at that location and resume full service operations in downtown Montpelier.”
Doherty said he did not have “a definite timeline” for when that work would be completed, nor did he offer any explanation as for why retail services had been delayed far beyond the agency’s original projection.
“There’s been no community engagement at all. They need to be providing information,” said Doyle, referring to a federal law that dictates that the permanent closure of a post office involves a community process, which includes a 60-day notice of a proposed action, so neighbors can provide comments.
Meanwhile, more than a year after floodwaters gutted it, the federal building on 87 State St. remains in a state of disrepair, with still no date set for its reopening.
The General Services Administration, which owns the building, said it continues to “identify additional issues and determine the extent of necessary repairs,” according to Paul Hughes, a spokesperson for the federal agency. Some of those repairs have included catch basins, civil work, and HVAC work, he said. The early July floods and heavy rains this summer have not caused any additional damage, he added.
“The building sump pumps continue to pump water out of the sump pits after these weather events,” said Hughes.
