Winchester residents with a post office box will have to drive a little further to get their mail for the time being.
Last Friday’s straight line wind storm damaged the roof of the Winchester Post Office on the downtown square. Residents on Tuesday found themselves locked out of the building with a sign on the door saying the building was shuttered to the public until further notice.
Winchester Mayor Rex McIntire says he recently spoke with the Winchester Postmaster to see what’s going on with the building. McIntire says a large number of residents, mostly rural residents who have post office boxes, called City Hall asking for information on assistance about getting their mail.
McIntire fears that the USPS is attempting to close up shop in Winchester, and the storm just helped the cause: “We went through this situation a few years ago where for some strange reason, the USPS wanted to set up a post office box thing here without having an actual post office and just have mail delivered just through the boxes where people would have to come up and get their own mail. Of course, we fought that through legal channels and got it stopped. It’s a small county. I know that. But, we are the county seat. And, if you can’t have a post office in the county seat in Illinois, then there is something wrong.”
McIntire says he gets both a post office box for his business and home delivery. He says that home mail delivery in the City of Winchester has not been disrupted. McIntire says that for his business mail he has to come to Jacksonville to get it for the time being. He says Postmaster Ethan Hartley is not supposed to let the public inside the Winchester location: “I talked to [Hartley] about people that only have boxes at the post office and how they are supposed to get their mail when they won’t let them in. He was told to lock the doors and not allow the public in the building, period. He told me that if people took a photo ID to the Jacksonville post office, they can get their mail picked up there. That’s pretty much an inconvenience.”
McIntire says that USPS has not given a timeline on when the building’s roof will be fixed, if it will be fixed, and when the post office building will be reopened.