Kokua Line
Kokua Line
Postal Service monitors
mail pickup timesQuestion: I was at the Manoa Marketplace around 2 p.m. June 11 -- Kamehameha Day -- and noticed a postal worker unloading mail from the two drive-up mailboxes. The stated pickup time on both boxes is 3:45 p.m. weekdays and 2 p.m. Saturdays. There is no holiday pickup time, but Kamehameha Day is not a federal holiday anyway. Was he going to come back and do another pickup around 3:45 p.m.? What if I dropped a letter into one of the boxes at 3:40 p.m.? Would it have had to wait until the next day to be picked up?
Answer: There may be an extra, earlier pickup on a particular day because of high volume, but at any of the mailboxes, regular pickup should be no earlier than the stated time, according to U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman Felice Broglio.
The post office at Manoa Marketplace is a contract station. However, federal postal workers unload the mailboxes on a regularly scheduled, separate-carrier route as posted, Broglio said.
An additional pickup may have been scheduled that day because of overflow or because of anticipated overflow, she said.
Broglio said the postal service encourages businesses or groups with large mailings to drop them off at a post office, but because of convenience, they may sometimes find it easier just to dump everything into a mailbox.
"But definitely, (carriers) will adhere to that time schedule posted on the box," she said.
She also noted that every mailbox "has a digital scanner" so that officials can track that the mail is, first, picked up and at what time.
"That's one of our standards and we're very strict about it," she said. Having mail picked up when customers are told it will be picked up is "so important" that "we actually track it, and our performance is graded on that."
So while mail can be picked up one to five minutes late because of traffic or other extenuating circumstances, it "can never" be picked up earlier, she said.
Q: I use the bus to get home. After the bus makes a right turn from Ward Street onto Prospect Street, I get off the first bus stop. I proceed up the street. Oftentimes, there is a car in a driveway sitting over the walk area, then another car beyond that parked on the street. There is a designated walkway which has growth in it -- tall hedges. We must walk out onto the street to get by. It is a dangerous situation. Can someone look into this?
A: By now there should be enough room for you to walk safely off the street.
The property owner abutting that area was advised to trim the hedges back to allow at least a 3-foot clearance, said William Deering, chief of the city Housing Code Section.
Regarding vehicles blocking a sidewalk, Deering said to call police at 911 (indicating it's a nonemergency).
Mahalo
To Kenny and staff of the Wahiawa Christian Church. They stayed with us for two hours, helping us unlock our car to get our keys at Waimea Bay on Sunday, June 30. They were unbelievably nice. -- Ioane and Kitty
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