Gephardt: What’s Behind Late Delivery Of Farmington Post Office Renovation?
Nov 10, 2020, 6:18 PM | Updated: 7:59 pm
FARMINGTON, Utah – Residents in Farmington said they are frustrated by the few signs of progress they’ve seen as crews remodel their city’s post office.
A project, which the KSL Investigators confirmed should have been completed more than a year ago, now seems to have stalled.
The literal million-dollar question is what will it take to get the renovated post office back up and running again?
The expansion to the U.S. Post Office in Farmington has been a frustrating eyesore to Linda Wallace, who lives next door, and her neighbor, Nickole Tanner. Worse than how it looks; these homeowners said it’s inconvenient.
“We’re still getting our mail in the little trailer,” said Tanner.
While there hasn’t been a break in service, residents are retrieving their mail from P.O. boxes stuffed inside a storage shed that is haphazardly sitting out in the parking lot.
“Go walk inside there,” said Wallace. “You can’t even do social distancing and think about the postal workers that are putting our mail in there every day.”
Wallace and Tanner said they have reached out to their local postmaster but have not gotten a clear indication of when this project will finally be finished.
“I don’t know who to ask. That’s why I called you,” Wallace said to the KSL Investigators.
Through a public records request, we confirmed the project was never supposed to take this long. The proposed work schedule was planned for only 360 days. So, what’s the hold-up?
When KSL asked the post office, a spokesperson wrote, “I am unable to elaborate on the specific details. However, there have been parking lot and drainage issues that have caused the project to take longer than first anticipated.”
When KSL reached out to the contractor who was hired by the postal service, well, they blamed the post office.
Diversified Maintenance Systems said the USPS has been dragging its feet on signing a new contract that will allow the project to move forward and fix the newly discovered issues. Their spokesperson told KSL, “Tell the Farmington folks we are really trying.”
“It would just be nice if we could have our post office back,” remarked Tanner.
USPS officials said that is going to happen but as to when — that is still up in the air. A USPS spokesperson said he expects it will happen in “the first half of 2021.”
While the agency refused to say anything about its alleged impasse with its contractor, they apologized for delays and inconveniences it is causing in the Farmington community.
