MARBLE HILL TO GET BIGGER POST OFFICE

MARBLE HILL -- Jim Ganime is changing his address before he even has time to learn all the street names in town.

Ganime, the newly appointed Marble Hill postmaster, will move the post office to a new site early next year.

After waiting nine years, the city will finally get a new post office building. A lot at 200 Highway 34 will eventually be home to the Marble Hill post office.

Although actual construction hasn't begun, Licking Construction Co. is moving dirt and rock to stabilize the foundation.

Construction should be completed in early spring, said Mary Murphy, postal operations manager for the southeast region.

Since the towns of Marble Hill and Lutesville consolidated in 1986, there have been several delays in the building project.

The biggest problems were design modifications and the reorganization of the U.S. Postal Service, Ganime said, adding that the reorganization put the building project on a back burner.

The modifications included adding a loading dock to the draft designs, which changed the entire layout of the office, he said.

At only 1,082 square feet, the existing post office is smaller than most upstairs floors in a house, one employee said. At 5,000 square feet, the building will be almost five times larger than the existing one.

"I don't know how they do as well as they do," Murphy said. "They are just crammed in there."

There's not much space to sort mail for the more than 2,700 residents in the Marble Hill delivery area. Employees sort each piece by hand.

"We even hand-load the trucks," Ganime said, adding that the employees work well in such close quarters.

But sorting mail by hand was one of the easiest tasks for postal employees. Marble Hill City Manager David Jackson and the former postmaster had to number houses to establish rural route delivery.

After residents of Marble Hill and Lutesville voted to consolidate, the Lutesville post office closed. That left only one office to deliver mail to the residents of the newly formed city.

"We have strict rules for consolidation," Murphy said. "It's a long, drawn out process."

The process includes several studies and meetings with city officials and residents of the towns. The U.S. Postal Service never consolidates an office unless the towns consent, Murphy said.

New offices are built only when towns consolidate or there isn't adequate space in an existing building, she added.

Only one other post office has been closed in the region. Illmo and Scott City consolidated in 1980 and combined their two post offices.