MONTPELIER, VT– Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.) today joined Vermont postal employees and American Postal Workers Union (APWU) members, the Montpelier Commission of Recovery and Resilience, community advocates, and postal customers to call on U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to improve rural mail service across Vermont and reopen the Montpelier Post Office. The post office has been closed for nearly 450 days following devastating flooding in Montpelier and across Vermont in July 2023.
“For nearly 450 days, Vermont’s capital city has been without a functioning post office. It’s outrageous and unacceptable by any measure—including USPS’ own standards of restoring service after a disaster. Our seniors, families, small businesses and postal workers need and deserve better,” said Senator Welch. “I will continue to fight alongside Vermont’s postal workers and our community leaders, and demand action from the Postal Service’s national management. This is an essential service, and it’s long-past time DeJoy does his job and delivers.”
The rally comes as the Vermont Congressional Delegation sent a letter to DeJoy today, demanding a date by which the USPS will open a fully operational retail post office in downtown Montpelier. Yesterday, Vermont Attorney General Charity R. Clark also called on Postmaster General DeJoy and the USPS District Management to provide a detailed timeline to restore service in Montpelier, and stated that her “office is cognizant of the legal obligations on the Postal Service when it wishes to relocate, close, or consolidate a post office, whether temporarily as the result of a natural disaster like our July 2023 flood, or permanently.”
“We write with disappointment and alarm that USPS has yet to restore retail postal services for the people of Montpelier, Vermont,” said the Delegation today. “As you know, it has been more than 440 days since Montpelier’s post office was destroyed by catastrophic flooding…USPS has an internal benchmark of restoring retail service within 180 days of a natural disaster. Yet 14 months after the flood, Montpelier still does not have a fully functioning post office. It is the only state capital in the country without one.”
“We understand that USPS has faced many challenges in restoring services following the multiple floods that hit Vermont in 2023 and 2024; however, your continued failure to restore service to Montpelier over a year later has undermined Vermonters’ confidence in the Postal Service. Transparency and urgent action by USPS are now needed to restore it,” the lawmakers wrote.
View photos from the event below:
This spring, Welch took to the Senate Floor to call out Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s failure to deliver for rural America, pointing to the postal delays plaguing Vermont and other rural areas because of DeJoy’s policies, and the nearly nine-month-long fight to re-open a fully-functioning Post Office in Vermont’s capital city after severe flooding in Summer 2023. Following advocacy by impacted Vermonters, community organizers, concerned workers, the press, and the Vermont Congressional Delegation, the Postal Service announced it had signed a lease for a new retail Post Office. However, that new location is still not open, and the USPS has been unresponsive to requests about plans for restoring full service.
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