Post Office Update from Sally - Meeting July 1

There will be a meeting at the Community House Tuesday evening at 6:00 pm, July 1 for our community to discuss the post office situation. This is an opportunity to brainstorm about what we want and by the end hopefully have a plan to start making it happen - subsequent meetings could include guests from the outside to further those goals. Alice has found some relevant federal statutes ,and I'll see if there's any more, that might guide us.

I just talked to Cheryl Hey, the regional "retail" specialist for VT/NH postal region (she is in NH), because she will be part of the meeting on Monday to tell her a couple of things. First I said that we do have some local people who will be willing to share the job of keeping the mail sorted daily if need be until we get the proper staffing we're supposed to get. I also said that we are very much interested in knowing what it would require to get our "regular" post office status back. When I said to her that we've had a post office in Ripton since the mid 1800's and it's only relatively recently (12-15 yrs) that it's been a contract office, she said "Oh, wow" like that was news to her.

If you haven't done so, please sign the petition that is both at the store and outside the town office. Take a page to others to sign if you want and bring it back. I would like to fax the petition to Cheryl's office prior to the meeting.

Thanks, Sally