{"id":36941,"date":"2024-12-09T10:35:49","date_gmt":"2024-12-09T15:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=36941"},"modified":"2024-12-09T10:35:49","modified_gmt":"2024-12-09T15:35:49","slug":"sen-blumenthal-questions-pmg-dejoy-on-the-future-of-unused-or-underutilized-postal-service-sites-in-connecticut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2024\/12\/09\/sen-blumenthal-questions-pmg-dejoy-on-the-future-of-unused-or-underutilized-postal-service-sites-in-connecticut\/","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Blumenthal Questions PMG DeJoy on the Future of Unused or Underutilized Postal Service Sites in Connecticut"},"content":{"rendered":"
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DeJoy commits to visiting Ridgefield USPS site amid concerns about unused parking lot affecting local small businesses<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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[HARTFORD, CT] \u2013 12\/6\/24 – In case you missed it, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, questioned U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy yesterday on unused or underutilized United States Postal Service (USPS) sites in Connecticut that are negatively affecting small businesses, economic development, and local residents.<\/p>\n

In Ridgefield, Connecticut, an often-vacant USPS parking lot remains a problem for the town, surrounding businesses, and Ridgefield residents, who cannot use the parking lot to visit other businesses. The lot is underutilized or not used at all for USPS business despite claims from USPS that the parking lot is necessary \u201cduring our peak holiday season when mail and package volumes dramatically increase.\u201d During today\u2019s hearing, Blumenthal presented DeJoy with a photograph of the clearly empty lot from December of last year. In 2021, Ridgefield\u2019s mail-handling operations moved to the USPS annex in Danbury, dramatically reducing operations.<\/p>\n

Blumenthal pressed DeJoy to commit to looking into the issue and consider selling unused or underutilized Connecticut sites which would result in more revenue for the USPS.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Norwalk, they are in the process of redeveloping their downtown now in real time. In Milford, they are redeveloping a downtown. They want to provide you with reasonable alternatives for the postal property, if it ever is going to be used. I could go through a number of towns where in real time, right now there are businesses, taxpayer interests, and your customers at stake. Why can’t we move on some of these properties rather than the Post Office in effect stonewalling the people of Connecticut?\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>asked Blumenthal.<\/p>\n

Postmaster General DeJoy committed to joining Blumenthal in Connecticut to visit the Ridgefield Postal Service site, among other unused or underutilized sites. Blumenthal followed up on DeJoy\u2019s commitment sending him a formal invitation\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0to join him in a visit to Ridgefield during the winter holiday season.<\/p>\n

Video of Blumenthal and Postmaster General DeJoy\u2019s exchange can be found here<\/a>. A transcript is available below.<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0Thanks for having this hearing, thank you, Mr. Dejoy, for being here today.<\/p>\n

When you were last here in April, you and I talked a little bit about Ridgefield, Connecticut\u2014a small town, but important to me and the people of Connecticut, along with other towns where the United States Postal Service has property that is essentially unused and where in fact the\u00a0Postal Service could save some money\u2014maybe not billions of dollars but every penny saved, as you know from your business experience, is important to corporation. When we spoke in April, you promised to look into the Ridgefield property personally, but all you did afterward was cite a September 2023 letter from one of your\u00a0government relations people, Scott Slusher. Is he still with you?<\/p>\n

DeJoy:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0Is he here today?<\/p>\n

DeJoy:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0Good morning, Mr. Slusher. Mr. Slusher told me in that letter, \u201cDuring our peak holiday season when mail and package volumes dramatically increase, the lot will be needed to accommodate the\u00a0foreseeable needs of our customers and the additional seasonal employees we employ to meet those needs.\u201d When was the last time, Mr. Dejoy, you visited Ridgefield, Connecticut?<\/p>\n

DeJoy:<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t know that I\u2019ve ever been to Ridgefield, Connecticut.<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0Has Mr. Slusher ever visited? I take it from your non-answer that he hasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

DeJoy:<\/strong>\u00a0If you\u2019re asking me if Mr. Slusher\u2014I don\u2019t keep up with the travel.<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0You don\u2019t know? No.<\/p>\n

Let me show you a photo of that lot. Last December, December 27, during the peak holiday season. It\u2019s empty. It\u2019s empty every day in December. It\u2019s empty every day\u2014every day<\/em>\u2014 during the year. That lot is unused.\u00a0The small businesses on Main Street want to make that lot available for parking\u2014they don\u2019t want to take anything away from the United States Postal Service\u2014and the non-responsiveness\u2014I\u2019m tempted to say stonewalling\u2014of the Postal Service in response to their and my request, the town of Ridgefield, so that that property can be used for parking, enabling more customers for\u00a0those small businesses on Main Street, I think is really unacceptable. Will you come to Ridgefield?<\/p>\n

DeJoy:<\/strong>\u00a0Sure.<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0We\u2019ll set it up with your office during the peak holiday season.<\/p>\n

DeJoy:<\/strong>\u00a0I make trips, people invite me. I\u2019ll come to Ridgefield.<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0You\u2019ll love Ridgefield. It\u2019s especially beautiful in the peak holiday season. And while you\u2019re in Ridgefield, maybe we could also visit Milford, Norwalk, East Hartford,\u00a0where there are properties that could be sold by the Postal Service that are essentially unused\u2014the Postal Service could make some money\u2014and right now, it is essentially refusing even to respond as you have done essentially on Ridgefield.<\/p>\n

DeJoy:<\/strong>\u00a0First of all, I will take the whole tour. I\u2019ll come up. But, we are in a process\u2014we have\u00a0these requests throughout the whole nation, and we are in a process of looking at 31,000 facilities across the nation trying to determine what we are going to stay in and not stay in, where we are going to park electric vehicles, and so forth. So we are in a status of evaluation. Okay? We will get through this as we work through our whole network where our sorting and delivery centers are going to be, what are retail configurations are going to look like, and so forth.\u00a0And then that will be the time for us to move out in terms of looking at the monetization.<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0But the problem is, Mr. Dejoy\u2014and I apologize for interrupting, but my time is limited as you all know\u2014that in Norwalk, they are in the process of redeveloping their downtown. Now. In real time.<\/p>\n

DeJoy:<\/strong>\u00a0Senator, that is everywhere\u2014<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0In Milford, they are redeveloping a downtown. They want to provide you with reasonable alternatives for the\u00a0Postal property, if it ever is going to be used. In Litchfield\u2014I mean, I could go through a number of towns where in real time, right now, there are businesses and taxpayer interests, and your customers are at stake. Why can’t we move on some of these properties right away, rather than the Post Office, in effect, with all due respect, stonewalling the people of Connecticut?<\/p>\n

DeJoy:<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t know that we are\u2014 I do believe that we need to, and have started a process to, engage. I just was with a couple Congressmen in their towns looking at some of these projects. I do think we need to get into a better dialogue, more meaningful dialogue, with local constituents, quicker in terms of the decisions that we need to make and the reasons why we can\u2019t\u00a0relinquish or can relinquish the property. I think we need to get better at that. It does not change the answer, in many, many cases, because we do need many of these properties. So, I don\u2019t know, I mean, do you want me to look into this further?<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, you promised to look into it in April.<\/p>\n

DeJoy:<\/strong>\u00a0And we gave you an answer.<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0And you gave me an answer to refer to a September 2023 letter, which frankly, I find\u00a0insulting.<\/p>\n

DeJoy:<\/strong>\u00a0Well why do you find it insulting? If we feel we need the property? We need the property, we need the property.<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0Because what you say is absolutely untrue, that it is used in the peak holiday season. And if anybody paid attention, gave it the slightest care \u2013<\/p>\n

DeJoy:<\/strong>\u00a0That is not true. Because, Senator, when I got here, we added a thousand locations during peak to do deliveries. Because of some of the changes that we have made in our operational processes, that is coming down. That might have been, we ran a\u00a0lot of additional operations during the peak season that were crazy and costly and deteriorated service. So in our process\u2014I am now emptying buildings all over the country, but this is a process, I can\u2019t just\u2026<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, the process seems to be never ending.<\/p>\n

DeJoy:<\/strong>\u00a0Exactly.<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0And the lack of an end means the Post Office, the United States Postal Service, is deprived of revenue that it needs, and it means\u00a0insulting the people of the United States, who have an interest\u2014your customers, not only in that revenue but also in the most effective use of property that belongs to the United States Postal Service. So I welcome your willingness to come visit.<\/p>\n

DeJoy:<\/strong>\u00a0Senator, if I give up a bill, I get booted out of a retail center where I am paying, let\u2019s say, $300,000 a year. You know what the price of that is for me to go some place else today?\u00a0Like\u00a0$3 million a year. So I have to be careful with what we do with this real estate. There\u2019s significant increases in value and also a whole cartel of opportunists that we have dealt with over the years at the Postal Service with regard to the centers, so that property in a downtown, if you want a Post Office or Postal Service, we are going through making\u2013<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0Are you aware that the Post Office moved out of Ridgefield? The office is no longer there. I would suggest that you really look into,\u00a0as you promised you would do, the situation there personally, maybe ask\u2014<\/p>\n

DeJoy:<\/strong>\u00a0Get rid of him.<\/p>\n

Blumenthal:<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014Mr. Slusher to do an advanced visit so that you can be prepared when you come with me, and I appreciate your willingness to do so, but time is not on our side when it comes to those small businesses, whether it\u2019s in Ridgefield or the interests of towns,\u00a0Milford, Norwalk, Litchfield,\u00a0East Hartford, where the property interests are not used properly. I apologize for going over my time, Mr. Chairman.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DeJoy commits to visiting Ridgefield USPS site amid concerns about unused parking lot affecting local small businesses [HARTFORD, CT] \u2013 12\/6\/24 – In case you missed it, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, questioned U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy yesterday on unused or underutilized United […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","category-usps-news","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36941"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36942,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36941\/revisions\/36942"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}