Postal service seeks new office sites in two towns

A U.S. Postal Service decision to seek a new home for its Dutchtown post office came as news to Voyann Smith, owner for 23 years of the Smith Stop, the crossroads store that housed the mail facility before last week's floods.

The damage to Smith's store, closed since last Tuesday, has kept her from reopening as she waits for a flood insurance adjuster to arrive from Delaware. So the postal service moved the 57 post office boxes at the store to Gordonville's post office at 5850 Highway 25 and assigned the Dutchtown postmaster, Mindy Lemons, to the Whitewater post office.

Burfordville's post office at 353 Route HH was also badly damaged, and mail for the 25 post office box customers and 182 rural mail delivery customers is being processed through the Millersville post office, 120 County Road 482.

In both cases postal officials are looking for replacement locations, said Wilbur Thornton, senior operating manager for Area 6 of the Mid America District. The landlords owning the space leased for postal operations "didn't want to spend a lot of money to fix things up," he said.

Smith said she can't understand where postal officials got the impression she doesn't intend to rebuild. "How can that be true when I have had no conversations with them at all?" she said.

The change of location is an emergency suspension, Thornton said. "We will go around the community looking for a new location," he said. "That doesn't mean we are closing it permanently."

A new location in Burfordville could be announced soon, Thornton said. "We have already received a suggestion at Burfordville to put it in a church parsonage, and if everyone agrees on that location we could put it in there."

Thornton was unsure when the Dutchtown post office would resume operations in the village of 99 people.

Lemons has been assigned as the officer in charge of the Whitewater post office, where an interim postmaster had been in charge. Burfordville postmaster Dave Enderle has been assigned duties in the Jackson post office, Thornton said.

rkeller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126