The Metropolis Council slammed the U.S. Postal Service for blowing off an emergency listening to aimed toward addressing service failures it says are inflicting residents to overlook out on payments and prescriptions, and elevating mail-in voting issues.
Councilor Sharon Durkan, who referred to as for the listening to final month, mentioned Tuesday that the USPS selected to not have interaction within the day’s dialogue as a result of it noticed the Council as having a “political agenda” in elevating the problem, and never being “so much about customers.”
Durkan was citing personal emails that she mentioned the USPS “accidentally forwarded.”
“That cannot be farther from the truth,” Durkan mentioned. “We are gathered here to address an urgent concern to constituents, the deteriorating quality of USPS service.”
Different councilors piled onto USPS for the snub, which got here after they closely promoted the listening to — which drew stay digital testimony from U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley — and the subject generated widespread press protection.
“It’s outrageous that someone from the post office has accused us of having a political agenda,” Councilor Benjamin Weber mentioned. “Our agenda is to make sure Boston residents get their mail, that they get their checks, that they get their medication and they get their ballots, making sure that happens.
“That’s not political,” Weber added. “It’s just ensuring that residents of Boston have a basic public service.”
Weber went on to accuse the USPS of being politicized, whereas pointing to U.S. Postmaster Basic Louis DeJoy, who he mentioned was appointed by former President Donald Trump and “kept there by obstruction by the Senate for Biden to appoint anyone else to the Board of Directors.”
DeJoy, the councilor mentioned, has “sought to run the post office like it’s a business that needs to turn a profit, which is absurd, because the post office, like the T or the water department, provides a necessary public service.”
Councilor Gabriela Coletta additionally bought in a dig on the “deplorable leadership” on the USPS, saying that she thought it was “rich to hear from his cronies that we are politicizing the issue, when we are just trying to represent our constituents” who aren’t receiving their prescriptions or whose ballots are getting misplaced within the mail.
Durkan pushed again on what she noticed as deceptive claims from the USPS, which issued a press release final month saying mail supply within the metropolis was inside “performance standards” throughout the newest monetary quarter, which prolonged from July 1 to Sept. 30.
“The reality on the ground tells a remarkably different story,” Durkan mentioned.
Residents all through Boston, she mentioned, have “experienced unacceptable delays and inefficiencies in their mail service,” which she mentioned has left them with out “critical communications, including legal documents and financial statements,” and led to delays in “vital medications.”
Durkan added in her opening remarks that the “unreliable Postal Service threatens to undermine our democratic process,” by way of mail-in voting changing into extra outstanding in recent times.
She later famous, nevertheless, that Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin made remarks this previous weekend that his workplace was “working very closely” with USPS to ensure it received’t influence the state and federal elections.
USPS union representatives collaborating within the listening to cited staffing points as a significant factor contributing to service issues. The union reps largely agreed with councilors on late mail and packages being a difficulty that warrants a lot concern, and even joined in on the bashing of Postal Service management.
They testified, nevertheless, that the unions don’t see mail-in voting as being as a lot of a priority forward of subsequent month’s elections, whereas pointing to what Scott Hoffman, nationwide enterprise agent for the American Postal Staff Union, described as an intensive vetting course of that negates “gamesmanship or failure.”
“That’s the one thing that we can say, don’t worry about, but everything else, you’ve got to worry about,” Hoffman mentioned. “That’s, I guess, the message for today.”
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