Inglewood residents continue to inundate Congresswoman Maxine Waters office with complaints about the three post offices in the city.
Locations are in Morningside Park, Downtown Inglewood, and Crenshaw-Imperial which are regularly closed to the public and paying customers with post office boxes and on the surface appears that nothing is being done to solve the problem.
Post office boxes cost $97 every six months to receive mail for both residents and businesses that are interrupted by the intermittent staffing at the locations.
Delivery service in Inglewood has slightly improved with mail delivery resuming during business hours whereas last year it was routine to receive mail after 8 p.m., however, despite robust recruiting efforts, no one is rushing to carry mail with safety concerns at an all time high.
Calls to Waters office yielded discussions with staff on mobile devices becuase they were admittedly driving. This leads residents to believe that the dysfunction in Waters district includes her office. Meaning no one is showing up to the office, whether its postal staff or her own.
Is it time to revamp how we get our mail?
When Los Angeles County wanted to adress dismal voter turnout, residents are no longer allowed to vote in their traditional voting locations and are now shifted to ballot boxes and/or voting centers to cast their ballots.
Is it time we have postal centers where we pick up our mail and remove postal carriers from going door-to-door and instead have them staff the physical locations and hand out our mail once we arrive?
It would address staffing shortages and would streamline the efficiency of mail delivery.
Paying upwards of $200 per year to routinely show up to a location that is closed is not a conducive way of doing business and honestly has nothing to do with the assumption that Donald Trump would be reelected and privatize postal delivery as Waters office suggested.
Congress has the opportunity to be at the forefront of revamping the postal service to avoid further disruptions after November 2024.
Emilie St. John is a contributing writer for South Bay Examiner and the Los Angeles Wave newspaper