ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, July 19, 1996 TAG: 9607190027
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
The town's ongoing post office controversy will be the subject of a citizen's meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Montgomery County Courthouse.
The meeting is being organized by Glenn Cochran, a Christiansburg insurance agent, and Ed Sherman, a local businessman. Cochran and Sherman are urging residents to make their desires and concerns known to the Postal Service.
The U.S. Postal Service has promised to keep open the downtown post office as a contract facility, even as it consolidates the downtown and Cambria post offices into a new, larger facility, most likely to be located on Arbor Drive near the Marketplace shopping center. Ground has yet to be broken for the new facility, and it would not open until about the fall of 1997.
Contract facilities are post offices that are run by outside contractors where customers can mail letters and packages, buy stamps and rent postal boxes. But residents are pushing for a "classified" facility with window clerks, similar to Blacksburg's downtown post office. Town Council and the Chamber of Commerce passed resolutions in recent days asking for such a facility.
Christiansburg wasn't even going to get a contract post office until the intervention by staff members in Rep. Rick Boucher's office. Postal administrators a week ago decided that Christiansburg's downtown office would remain open in some form.
Questions that might come up at Wednesday's meeting are: How long would a contract post office remain open downtown, and will mail arrive there late?
LENGTH: Short : 35 linesby CNB