The Postal Service has confirmed to U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell’s office that a new five-year lease has been executed for the Akron post office and that the office will stay open, her office said in a release Friday, Oct. 23.
Her office learned Thursday, Oct. 22, that lease negotiations between the Postal Service and the property owner had resumed, the release said. “USPS subsequently confirmed to Rep. Sewell’s office that a new five-year lease had been executed, ensuring that the Akron Post Office will remain open and continue serving the community for years to come,” it said.
“According to USPS, postal officials are currently coordinating to reinstall the equipment and infrastructure that was previously removed from the facility,” the release said. “The Akron Post Office will resume operations once the necessary postal equipment is returned. In the meantime, customers may continue to conduct retail transactions, including mailing letters and picking up packages, at the mobile retail unit onsite.”
The release gives no date for the equipment’s return. It does not name the Postal Service official who confirmed the lease or say whether the confirmation came in writing.
Akron Mayor Chris Rollins told residents in a public Facebook post the morning of Thursday, Oct. 22, the day before the release, that the post office “is going back into our same location” and “is reopening and being restored!!” The post did not say who had told him or when operations would resume.
The Postal Service had posted nothing on the lease in its Alabama news releases or service alerts as of Friday afternoon, Oct. 23. Its latest Alabama news release was still the Oct. 19 release on Akron, which said operations at the Akron post office would be “permanently suspended” effective Oct. 31 “due to non-renewal of the lease.”
Its Alabama service alert, in an entry dated Oct. 21, still read: “All operations are suspended temporarily. All operations at the Akron Post Office will be moved to the Moundville Post Office,” followed by Moundville’s retail hours.
Under the Oct. 19 release, Akron box holders could pick up their mail, with identification, at the mobile retail unit through Oct. 31, and could mail letters and pick up packages there. The unit’s hours under that release were 8:30 a.m. to noon and 1 to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday.
That release also said all postal operations, box mail included, would move to the Moundville post office, 259 Second Ave., on Nov. 1, with retail hours of 8:30 to 11 a.m. and 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to noon Saturday. Sewell’s release does not say what becomes of the Oct. 31 date or the move to Moundville; it says only that customers may keep using the mobile unit until operations resume.
Sewell and Rollins met with Akron residents about the office Tuesday, Oct. 20. The building’s owner, Brian De Rousseau, reached by phone during the meeting, said the owners never gave the Postal Service notice to vacate and had offered to keep the rent at its current rate for five more years.
Sewell’s Oct. 16 letter to Postmaster General David Steiner demanded “the immediate reopening of the facility,” in her release’s words, and asked for an answer in writing by Oct. 19. The release does not say whether the Postal Service answered the letter.
The six Hale County post office ZIP codes, Akron, Gallion, Greensboro, Moundville, Newbern and Sawyerville, are among those where the Postal Service has cut mail pickups from twice a day to once, according to a lookup the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica published Thursday, Oct. 22, with a report on late mail ballots. ProPublica compiled the list from filings in the Postal Regulatory Commission’s docket and lists all six as covered since March 11, 2024.
The cut leaves outgoing mail at the post office overnight, to be postmarked a day later at the sorting plant, ProPublica reported. In this year’s primaries, the share of mailed ballots rejected as late doubled or tripled in affected counties in Washington, California, Ohio, North Carolina and Oregon, the report found. Alabama was not among the states it analyzed.
The Postal Service’s own plan for election mail, a Sept. 30 memorandum to all employees, orders “extraordinary measures” from Saturday, Oct. 24, through Election Day. From Monday, Oct. 26, post offices are to pull completed ballots bound for the local election office out of the day’s collected mail, postmark them by hand the day they are accepted and hand them over. Offices on the reduced pickup schedule are told to cull returned ballots from carriers, retail counters and collection boxes, hand-cancel them the day they are collected and deliver them to the local election office each day. The memorandum does not mention mobile retail units.
Absentee ballot applications delivered in person are due Thursday, Oct. 29, under the Secretary of State’s schedule for the Nov. 3 general election; the deadline for applications by mail was Tuesday, Oct. 27. Completed ballots returned in person are due by close of business Monday, Nov. 2, and a ballot returned by mail must reach the absentee election manager by noon Tuesday, Nov. 3. In Hale County, applications and completed ballots go to the absentee election manager, Circuit Clerk Catrinna Perry, 1001 Main St., Greensboro, 334-624-4334.
