Update Monday, Sept. 20:
Despite assurances from Postal Service officials last week that staffing issues had been resolved, the lobby and transaction counter at the Yachats Post Office was closed again Monday, Sept. 20 because a clerk was out and there was no one else available to staff the office.
Responding to an inquiry from YachatsNews, a Post Office spokesman in Seattle said he had “been told there have been two Clerks at the Yachats Post Office today except during lunch time. They are accepting debit and credit transactions. They are also taking care of the Post Office Box mail.”
In fact, the business counter and lobby was closed all day. The postmaster from Neotsu in north Lincoln County came down in the afternoon to hand out packages through the service door in the lobby, but did not opened the front counter and could not sell stamps or handle monetary transactions.
Ernie Swanson, the USPS spokesman, also did not respond to an inquiry to identify the new, acting postmaster and why that person was not at the office Monday.
— YachatsNews
By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews.com
Once again, Yachats postal patrons can retrieve and send mail at predictable hours — the Yachats Post Office has resumed its traditional schedule, at least according to spokesmen in Seattle and Denver.
As of Wednesday, the Post Office counter was staffed and back to its 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. operation – with a one-hour closure for lunch from 1-2 p.m.
Severe staffing issues in August and early September closed the lobby periodically, sometimes with limited hours, sometimes with little advance notice.
“The situation at the Yachats Post Office is being resolved,” Ernie Swanson, a Postal Service spokesman in Seattle, said in an email to YachatsNews. He said a clerk from a nearby office has been assigned to the Yachats facility, along with an acting postmaster.
“We expect a ‘permanent’ postmaster to be selected to the office by mid-October,” Swanson said. “The office will maintain the regular posted hours. The Postal Service apologizes for the inconvenience this has caused our customers.”
Swanson did not respond Wednesday or Thursday to two follow-up phone calls and two emails asking for more details. A third email to David Rupert, a USPS spokesman in Denver, received this response: “It is our goal to be open during the office’s posted hours … We hope to have the postmaster job filled soon which will stabilize the situation.”
“We do have a 24-hour post office at USPS.com,” Rupert added, “which can offer many shipping options that you can do from your home or office.”
Staffing problems have plagued the Yachats facility for more than two years. Its former postmaster, Jeff Davis, retired July 30. His departure was partly due, Davis said previously, to the management practices of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. Since he was appointed in 2020, DeJoy, the owner of an East Coast logistics company and a prominent Republican fundraiser, has been mired in controversy. Mail carriers have blamed his cost-cutting measures for creating backlogs across the country. Davis also blames DeJoy for creating continuity problems in local offices by moving higher-ups around every three months.
The lack of affordable housing in the area has also contributed to the staffing issues, as potential new employees arrived — and then left — during the spring and summer when they couldn’t find places to live.
In addition to being a community gathering place, the Yachats Post Office is the only one between Waldport and Florence. Many residents have no roadside mailboxes and have to use locked boxes to receive their mail. Packages too big to fit into the boxes must be retrieved from an inner lobby — the same one that has been available on only a limited basis recently.
- Cheryl Romano is a Yachats freelance reporter who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. She can be reached at Wordsell@gmail.com
I was stuck in a very crowded line indoors for an hour there Tuesday. There should have been a way to at least just retrieve packages on Monday. I had 3 yellow cards in my box that day. The place was a disorganized, and unsafe mess by Tuesday which in my view was not okay nor legal to not even hand out packages on Monday which would have helped mitigate a major Covid risk in a poorly ventilated overcrowded indoor space.
I’ve lived in my home in Yachats for a year now. I was told there weren’t enough mail boxes at the Post Office for rent, so I get my taxpayer funded U.S. mail through General Delivery. The retail office has to be open for me to receive any bills, correspondence or medicine. This situation is ridiculous.