The mail pickup predicament persists in Glenwood Landing as residents report new and continuing issues at the post office. Some allege that they have been told they will have to pay a fee if their post office box overflows, and several have expressed confusion over the removal of a community bulletin board. Residents also say that they are still having trouble picking up packages.
Glenwood Landing residents began reporting postal trouble in January when many found themselves locked out of their P.O. boxes before they could complete the annual verification to retain their free P.O. box. Residents are provided with free boxes because the hamlet does not get mail delivery to homes. Unexpected combination changes are something residents said in January that they had never dealt with before.
Rachel McAree, who grew up in Glenwood Landing and still lives there said that recently, it has been one problem after another.
“I feel like,” she said, “we’re constantly moving on to something else.”
Another resident, Shawn McManus, confirmed in response to written questions on Monday that he was told he would be charged a fee if his P.O. box overflows. McManus did not respond to request for further comment by the time of print.
United States Postal Service policy 4.3.3, Accumulation and Overflow of Mail, requires customers to pick up mail “promptly” from their boxes. It also states that customers must make prior arrangements with the postmaster if they cannot remove mail for more than 30 days and it is likely that their box reach an “overflow condition.” This condition is when a box exceeds capacity on 12 out of 20 consecutive business days, according to policy 4.3.3.
Customers can also rent a larger box but would have to pay for it. Glenwood Landing residents are part of Fee Group E, meaning they are assigned the smallest available box that reasonably accommodates their volume of mail for free.
Glenwood Landing residents are assigned to this fee group because they live within a zip code boundary administered by a post office, their physical addresses are potential carrier delivery points, and the postal service does not provide carrier delivery to homes. Customers must meet all of these criteria in order to qualify for a free P.O. box as part of Fee Group E. The only other community in Nassau County that does not get home mail delivery is Point Lookout.
According to residents, a bulletin board was used for community purposes like posting information about events or finding a babysitter, dog walker or someone to shovel snow. The bulletin board had been up for at least two decades, according to 21-year resident Jodi Vosilla, but was recently removed.
“It was just a super cute thing,” said resident Donna Edquist, “that the community had.”
Federal regulations regarding conduct on postal property put in place in 1972 prohibit posting materials like flyers, pamphlets, signs and posters that are not official postal or government notices and announcements.
“In the past,” Amy Gibbs, USPS Spokeswoman for Long Island Queens wrote in response to written questions, “a bulletin board was erroneously erected in front of the Glenwood Landing Post Office.”
A common concern among residents since January is difficulty getting their packages after they are notified that a package has been delivered. Some are able to get certain packages delivered to their homes by Amazon and Federal Express, but many have to be picked up at the post office.
Similarly to January, residents say they arrive at the post office after learning their package has been delivered just to find out they cannot yet pick it up.
“You see you get a package,” Edquist said. “It gets delivered at nine o’clock in the morning. You stop by around two and they’re like, ‘No, haven’t sorted it yet.’”
Gibbs explained in a response Monday that customers must include their P.O. box number along with their address on a package. She wrote that packages arriving without a P.O. box number will be delayed in being sorted. Leaving out the P.O. box number is the same reason Gibbs provided for sorting delays in January.
Several residents, including Edquist and McAree, said they would prefer to get mail delivered to their homes. Glenwood Landing historically has not had home delivery because it has had fewer than 750 delivery addresses per route, the number required by the USPS to deliver mail directly to homes.
“I have family in remote areas of Ireland,” McAree said. “They have a man come up on a motorbike and drop their mail off. But here we can’t get mail delivery.”
Vosilla echoed this frustration. She said she has been “wishing” for home delivery the entire time she has lived in the hamlet.
“We’re in the middle of Nassau County,” she said. “We’re not in the middle of the boondocks.”
Vosilla, among others, also expressed concerns about getting mail when institutions, such as banks, do not accept a P.O. box number as an address.
“We can’t control,” Gibbs wrote, “the mailing requirements of other institutions.”
