PORT EWEN TEMPORARY QUARTERS
Siting of modular building serving postal customers in Esopus hamlet draws complaints
U.S. Postal Service officials plan a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday, opening a temporary modular post office on a site Esopus town officials consider to have been chosen out of a desperation.
The ceremony is scheduled for 11 a.m. at the corner of Bowne Street and West Stout Avenue.
The 45-foot trailer that will serve as a temporary post office is opening about five months after Postal Service officials closed the previous facility due to a roof leak, followed by disputes with the property owner over repairs. Mail for about 800 addresses during the closure has been delivered to the Ulster Park Post Office at 364 Union Center Road, which is seven miles away.
The Postal Service will pay $1,800 per month to use the previously vacant lot at 215 Bowne St. Meanwhile, town officials are demanding that a status report be provided every two weeks on the search for a permanent location.
“The community has been turned upside down by the inconvenience of the post office closing and has demanded that
“The community has been turned upside down by the inconvenience of the post office closing and has demanded that the town do something.”
the town do something,” town Supervisor Shannon Harris said.
Harris said Postal Service officials have estimated it will take up to 18 months to secure another site.
Next-door neighbor Megan Curjulo said a new site cannot be found soon enough for her.
She said neither town officials nor the U.S. Postal Service has been cooperative in maintaining her family’s privacy. “Just a privacy fence (would) make everyone happy,” she said. “There’s windows on the back of this post office, so they overlook my pool, my yard, everything. We went to a Town Board meeting and they said it was our responsibility to put up a fence.”
Curjulo added that there will be daily traffic in and out of the trailer.
U.S. Postal Service spokesman George Flood said the post office would like to be a good neighbor and might be willing to pay for a fence, but it would have to be authorized by the town.
“We don’t own the property,” he said.
“It’s something we could look into and discuss with the town,” Flood added. “But we put that trailer in a town-recommended location. We could have continued to ... have the (post office) box customers go to Ulster Park as we studied a new location.”
Flood said it is not known whether postal officials will raise the issue of a fence while in Port Ewen for the ribbon-cutting.
Harris said she is uncertain whether she will attend the event.