GRAND MARAIS, Minn. (KFGO/WCCO) – The mail delivery situation in at least one Minnesota county is out of hand. Up until earlier this week, residents of Cook County on the North Shore had not received any mail delivery since before the new year.
Minnesota’s U.S. Senators Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar are demanding answers from U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy about the situation. And it’s not the first time.
“We are deeply concerned by reports from residents that mail has not been delivered since last year. Minnesotans rely on the Postal Service for essential needs like medications, Social Security benefits, and paychecks. This disruption is unacceptable and must be resolved immediately and steps taken to prevent similar issues,” wrote the Senators in a statement.
Smith’s office says they’ve been looking into the problem in other parts of the state for several years, and have introduced legislation to address the postal service’s failure to accurately track when mail routes do not receive deliveries.
“We’re demanding answers from the post office and it’s not acceptable,” Smith told WCCO Radio Friday. “The national folks, Louis DeJoy and others, it is not acceptable for them to try to shift the blame when they have committed to us, that they were going to make sure that if there was a problem with mail delivery in Minnesota that they would get after it.”
Smith adds that she is hearing very different stories from post office leadership and residents who say the mail is not getting delivered.
“The post office management continues to tell us there’s nothing to see here, everything is working just fine, when my constituents tell me that that’s clearly not the case,” she says. “And that’s why we continue to press them for accountability and for answers and we’re not gonna stop because people should expect better service than this.
The American Postal Workers Union has been calling for improved staffing in the postal service for months.
“Like all communities, Minnesota’s North Shore relies on the Postal Service as an essential public service. We urge you to not only address this failure, but to work to prevent these repeated issues from occurring again,” wrote Smith and Klobuchar.
The Senators requested answers to the following questions no later than January 16, 2025.
- Is it true that leadership of the Minnesota-North Dakota District were unaware that a number of Cook County residents went over a week without mail until we notified them?
- How did oversight measures fail to notify leadership of addresses going so long without a delivery?
- When will all outstanding mail be processed and delivered to affected residents?
- Why were residents not permitted to pick up mail from local post offices?
- What are the current staffing levels for letter carriers, career and non-career, for Minnesota and Cook County?
- Did the Postal Service’s Service Performance Dashboard fully capture and report these delays?
- What steps are you taking to prevent future lapses in contracted delivery service?
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