WHITMIRE — A public meeting will be held in the Town of Whitmire on Sept. 25 with Representative Rick Martin and the Whitmire Post Office Postmaster to address the mail service concerns from residents, the meeting will be held at Town Hall Annex at 5 p.m.

“Most people contact me through Facebook and I got a lot of private messages saying ‘you’ve got to do something about the post office in Whitmire’ and I said I’ll see what I can do,” Martin said.

The issues Martin received ranged from residents not receiving mail, mail being sent back as un-deliverable, receiving other neighbor’s mail or mail being undelivered because of a dog in the yard.

Martin later met with the postmaster who was unaware of how many complaints were being received, he (the postmaster) said he would be willing to address every complaint or concern.

In their meeting, the postmaster told Martin that sometimes residents would not receive their mail because they had not switched to the 911 address, an issue that his predecessor never addressed. If an individual has not switched over to the 911 address, when mail comes to the post office the address is unrecognizable and sent back to Columbia, although some addresses are sorted through and put on a route if the mail carriers know the residence that the mail is going to, which is a tedious process.

Regarding the dog issue, the postmaster simply told Martin the mail carriers cannot take a chance of getting bit by a resident’s dog, so the mail is not received.

After hearing what residents had to say, Martin shared a public post on social media regarding the concerns and contacted Whitmire Mayor Billy Hollingsworth to have a public meeting to listen to what the citizens and postmaster had to say.

During Monday’s Whitmire Town Council meeting, Hollingsworth informed those in attendance of the meeting and encouraged them to come with their questions or concerns.

“This meeting is basically for people to meet with the postmaster face to face with their questions and to voice their opinions. I would hope that anybody who has issues with the post office would come out and be there, we’re just trying to get this thing resolved,” Hollingsworth said.

Martin hopes by reaching out to the community with this public meeting that everyone’s concerns can be addressed and resolved.

“We are encouraging people to come out so that we can help address these issues,” Martin said. “This meeting is basically for people to meet the postmaster face to face with their questions and voice their opinions. I would hope that anybody who has issues with the post office that people would come out and please be there, we’re just trying to get this thing resolved.”

Martin
https://www.newberryobserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/web1_Martin.jpgMartin

By Kelly Duncan

kduncan@newberryobserver.com

Reach Kelly Duncan at 803-768-3123 ext. 1868 or on Twitter @TheNBOnews.