Safety issue closes Wallace post office

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September 17, 2007

Service to residents, businesses unchanged

BY DENNIS BARTLOW The Commercial-News Mon Sep 17, 2007, 10:42 AM CDT

WALLACE, Ind. — The tiny southeastern Fountain County community has lost some of its identity with the closing of its post office, but it might not be gone forever.

“It is not closed permanently,” said Al Eakle, spokesman for the postal service in the Greater Indianapolis district. “It is closed under an emergency suspension of services.”

He said there was concern about the health and safety of postal employees at the present site.

“Mail service is continuing,” Eakle said. “Every business and residence has been given a delivery box. There has been no interruption of services.”

Hillsboro Postmaster Kenna Jean Foxworthy said a rural carrier from her office is handling 26 of the customers.

“We go north and east of Wallace,” she said. “Kingman goes south and west.”

Kingman Postmaster Jim Sutliff said his carrier added six to 10 new customers.

“It doesn’t affect us at all,” Sutliff said. “They are getting the mail as quickly as they always have.”

Wallace did not have any rural routes.

Foxworthy said residents can get postal services from their carrier.

“They can purchase stamps from their mail carrier,” she said.

Fountain County Commissioner Terry Ellingwood said it is “a sad thing. It is a big loss. It had been rumored that they might close.”

Although Ellingwood lived on a Kingman rural route, he maintained a post office box in Wallace for many years.

“It was so simple,” he said.

Wallace Postmaster Claudine Yerkes now works at the Alamo Post Office.

Meanwhile, Ellingwood wants to make sure the Wallace identity remains as a help to emergency vehicles.

“We are working with the 911 dispatchers and the new planning and zoning board,” Ellingwood said. “We are trying to set up meeting with the post office.”

Ellingwood wants to see the Wallace name attached to all addresses in Jackson Township, even if the ZIP code carries the town where their mail is directed from.

Ellingwood estimates that Hillsboro and Kingman each serve about a third of the mail customers in Jackson Township. Other mail is routed from Veedersburg, Marshall, Crawfordsville and Waynetown.

“I think this will simplify things,” Ellingwood said.

Virginia Scherer, director of the Fountain County Ambulance Service, said the ZIP code situation in Jackson Township has not been a problem so far.

“Our problem is when people do not mark their address on their house,” Scherer said.

She urged residents who think their address may be confusing to contact the 911 dispatch service so that distinguishing location markers can be added to their address on the dispatcher’s screen.

Ellingwood said other Fountain County townships, such as Troy Township and Covington, Logan Township and Attica, Van Buren Township and Veedersburg, Millcreek Township and Kingman and Cain Township and Hillsboro have an easy identity.

The other exception is Richland Township, where Ellingwood would split the township between Mellott and Newtown.

Eakle isn’t sure what the status is of the Wallace Post Office.

“I am not sure when a decision will be made (whether to reopen it),” he said.

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