Aug.17, 2006 – St. Thomas Postmaster Robert Allen had two announcements this week, both good news: one for the territory in general, and one to warm the hearts of Arturo Watlington Post Office patrons.
A local Postal Customer Council, what Allen called a consumer advisory council, is in the works, Allen said. "It will create a partnership with consumers. People don't understand the structure of the Post Office. We are going to do more public education."
As for the Watlington station, there is no guarantee that mail will arrive in a more timely fashion – yet – but the drive to pick it up will be considerably more comfortable.
Allen said this week that the pothole-punctuated parking lot is under contact to be repaved. In fact, work has already been started by Betterroads Asphalt Corp. A drainage ditch has been excavated from the major pot hole to the nearby gut.
The potholes have been a nuisance for years; from time to time they have been filled with gravel, and the gravel always washes out. One cranky postal patron said, "I can't say for sure how long they've been there. I thought they came with the building.
"There's one (pothole) that would accommodate a small car. I've often thought that if they would fill them with all the catalogs people leave on the counters, it would solve two problems."
Allen said the station has been neglected for about five years. He pointed out improvements done this year: air-conditioning, a new paint job and automatic sliding doors. "We had to do those things first," he said. "You don't put carpet on the floor before you paint the room."
The USPS Web site says, "The Postal Customer Council is a network of business mailers and representatives of the U.S. Postal Service who gather regularly to discuss and resolve local mailing issues. On both the national and local levels, the councils work to continually improve communication between the Postal Service and its customers."
Allen said he will put ads in the newspapers for members to join the council. "We are already meeting, and we are getting together with St. Croix. We need more media and more education on St. Croix as well as here."
Asked about the popular perception that the Virgin Islands doesn't get the same service as stateside destinations, Allen said, "My perception is that the Virgin Islands is getting the best service of any island in the world, as compared to the British Virgin Islands."
According to an entry in Widipedia, the online free encyclopedia, mail takes approximately two weeks to travel between Guam, a U.S. possession in the Pacific, and California. The entry doesn't distinguish between first class mail, periodicals and packages.
"We have a faulty perception of what's good mail service. For an island, ours is excellent," he said. "I'm not saying that things can't happen, and I'm not saying that Crowley doesn't misplace a barge. Look at the barge system. Any transportation business will tell you they get misinformation."
Allen said, "One planeload of priority mail will be the price of three trailers." Packages and periodicals come on the trailers.
Several postal customer complaints were aired at a June 1 public meeting called by Delegate to Congress Donna M. Christensen. In response to complaints about the length of time periodicals and packages take to get to St. Thomas, Lou Demeo, San Juan USPS operations manager, said: "The periodicals and packages are shipped from Jacksonville, Fla., to San Juan on a barge. This can take weeks to get to San Juan and sort and forward to the Virgin Islands."
He said he hoped to meet with Jacksonville officials within the month. "If we can eliminate Puerto Rico," he said, "it would speed delivery by more than a week."
From his San Juan office, Demeo said Thursday that the meeting has not yet taken place. It is a complicated process, he said. "Basically, we have to notify all the mailers [of periodicals], and they would have to change the way of their three-digit mail code," Demeo said. However, we should be seeing some improvement on St. Thomas he said. "A lot of second-class mail is bypassing San Juan now."
Actually, Demeo said, "It's complicated to explain, but the last three or four weeks, it still goes to San Juan, but it's not being held up there to be processed. That's being done on St. Thomas."
Demeo said his district manager was away, but will return next week when they can further discuss the matter.
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