On the outskirts of this coastal village — simply previous the highway signal telling guests they’re “Getting into a Socially Acknowledged Nature-Loving City” — a giant wood placard shows a set of hand-painted numbers. They’re modified every morning.
“Days With no Bolinas Submit Workplace,” the signal reads.
On June 1, that quantity hit 456.
That’s how lengthy it has been because the U.S. Postal Service was booted from its workplace in downtown Bolinas amid a struggle with its longtime landlord.
On this artsy little city in west Marin County — a haven for poets and painters, writers and actors — the loss hit exhausting. The 1,500 residents of ZIP Code 94924 have fought to get their submit workplace again with their most cherished device: creativity.
They’ve picketed with placards studying, “Actual Mail Not Electronic mail!” They’ve marched in native parades dressed as letter carriers. They’ve composed songs and written poems and despatched hundreds of letters, in hand-painted envelopes, to USPS officers.
They even drafted their very own plan for a brief submit workplace, provided to fund it, and despatched it to Congress.
“It’s a really Bolinas method, breaking via forms via artwork and tradition and pleas,” mentioned John Borg, who helps lead the residents marketing campaign. “This has taken method longer than it ought to.”
The method is quirky, however the loss is critical.
An indication on the entrance of Bolinas counts the times the small coastal city has been with out its submit workplace.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
Most individuals on this getting older rural neighborhood abutting the Level Reyes Nationwide Seashore don’t get residence supply. They relied upon day by day journeys to the submit workplace for parcels, pension checks and mail-order prescriptions, to not point out the possibility to atone for the small-town scuttlebutt.
Now, they have to drive no less than 40 minutes round-trip, via the forest on Freeway 1, to a flood-prone submit workplace at a campground within the even smaller city of Olema.
Enzo Resta, a longtime resident and founding father of the brand new Bolinas Movie Competition, in contrast response to the lack of the submit workplace with the so-called “hype cycle” round new applied sciences.
“There was the crash, the place there was lots of hope and indicators we might get it again — the height of inflated expectations,” he mentioned. “When it bought pushed a bit of additional, we type of went into the valley of despair, and we’re simply attempting to crawl again out.”
The Bolinas submit workplace shut down on March 3, 2023. It had occupied half of an unadorned single-story wood constructing on Brighton Avenue — most lately shared with a liquor retailer — for six a long time.
The USPS already was a tenant when Gregg Welsh, of Ventura County, acquired the constructing about 50 years in the past. His household belief at the moment owns it.
The connection between landlord and tenant soured way back.
Most individuals in Bolinas don’t get residence supply and relied upon day by day journeys to the submit workplace for his or her parcels, pension checks and mail-order prescriptions.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
In accordance with an announcement offered by Welsh via his lawyer, Patrick Morris, the USPS for years violated its lease, which required it to take care of and restore the flooring at its personal expense.
The postal service, the assertion reads, found asbestos within the flooring tiles in 1998, however primarily saved it hidden from the owner for greater than twenty years and didn’t submit warning indicators for the general public or staff.
When Welsh visited the Bolinas submit workplace in late 2020, the assertion reads, he noticed worn and damaged tiles and uncovered, deteriorating subfloor supplies.
The owner and the postal service tussled over who ought to pay for repairs and asbestos abatement.
The USPS lease, based on the assertion, resulted in January 2022, with the events nonetheless arguing over the ground. The postal service continued to occupy the constructing, sans lease, as a “tenant at sufferance.”
In a February 2023 electronic mail to USPS officers, which Morris offered to The Occasions, Morris mentioned his consumer had not but evicted the submit workplace, partially as a result of he had not needed to deprive Bolinas residents of postal services earlier than it may discover a new location. However at that time, Welsh had had sufficient. He demanded the submit workplace vacate the constructing inside a month.
Kristina Uppal, a Bay Space-based spokeswoman for the USPS, didn’t reply to questions from The Occasions about accusations made by the owner or concerning the alleged presence of asbestos within the constructing. She mentioned the USPS was “compelled from the previous facility as a result of surprising termination of a lease,” however that there aren’t any plans to completely shut the Bolinas submit workplace.
“We’re simply as desirous to resume retail operations in Bolinas because the neighborhood and supply enhanced accessibility corresponding to increasing avenue supply to alleviate any inconvenience,” Uppal wrote.
Bolinas residents despatched greater than 2,500 “artwork” letters with customized appeals asking U.S. Postal Service officers to resurrect mail service of their city.
(John Borg)
Residents need their submit workplace again, however their belief within the USPS has frayed.
The dust-up in Bolinas comes as U.S. Postmaster Louis DeJoy, appointed when former President Trump was within the White Home, is beneath hearth for efforts to consolidate postal services. In a Could letter, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators criticized his 10-year plan, Delivering for America, arguing that cost-cutting measures have degraded service and disproportionately affected rural communities.
Bolinas residents say they’ve had little direct communication from the USPS over the past 15 months. Bolinas, they observe, had a submit workplace since 1863, however townsfolk got lower than two weeks’ discover earlier than it closed.
Their mail has been bounced round — rerouted first to Olema, then to close by Stinson Seaside due to flooding, then again to Olema. Typically, their letters have been left in unsecured bins on outside tables.
The relocation has been extra than simply an inconvenience for the city’s aged residents, a lot of whom can’t drive. There’s little public transit, and greater than half the city’s residents are 65 or older.
Individuals started reporting issues getting mail-order treatment quickly after the submit workplace closed, based on the Marin County Board of Supervisors. Additionally they have struggled to get lab outcomes and healthcare protection updates.
Borg, 62, is a sort 1 diabetic who had his insulin delivered via the mail earlier than the closure. Now, he mentioned, bundle supply is so iffy that he drives two hours round-trip to San Rafael every month to choose it up at a pharmacy.
Bolinas’ poets and painters have been integral to the city’s marketing campaign for a submit workplace. Right here, an artist who goes by StuArt, creates the signal that can depend the times Bolinas goes with out service.
(John Borg)
Borg runs a small enterprise, making stainless-steel drinkware, and has had two five-figure checks for his firm misplaced within the mail.
He mentioned residents of the unincorporated city — which has no mayor or metropolis lawyer advocating on their behalf — needed to band collectively to make their voices heard.
Interesting to the surface world is a tall order for a spot so famously reclusive that, for years, a vigilante band referred to as the Bolinas Border Patrol stole highway indicators on Freeway 1 directing vacationers into city. As soon as, when the California Division of Transportation tried portray BOLINAS on the blacktop, sneaky residents promptly blacked them out with tar.
“We’re a small village that type of likes to maintain to ourselves and deflect consideration and never be tremendous profile. However we’re within the course of the place the city is altering,” mentioned Borg, noting {that a} rising share of Bolinas’ restricted housing inventory is getting used as second properties for the rich and short-term trip leases.
“The one factor that holds this place collectively is the submit workplace.”
There was no viable business actual property in tiny Bolinas for the submit workplace to maneuver into completely. And a 1971 water meter moratorium has successfully prohibited improvement for the final 53 years. The moratorium, which has been challenged and upheld in courtroom, was put into place as a result of Bolinas has a restricted water provide, largely coming from the Arroyo Hondo Creek within the Level Reyes Nationwide Seashore.
Final spring, residents drafted an in depth proposal for a brief facility — a cellular workplace trailer on a parking zone subsequent to the fireplace station — and provided to lift $50,000 for its set up.
Bolinas residents observe they got simply two weeks’ discover that their submit workplace — a fixture on the town since 1863 — was closing.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
They despatched the plan to a supportive Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), who shipped it to DeJoy. A spokesperson for Huffman mentioned his workplace has been in frequent contact with the USPS and shares the neighborhood’s frustration over the sluggish course of.
Uppal, the USPS spokeswoman, mentioned the company has “reviewed proposals” and “will choose a web site that finest meets our operational wants and may present continued service to the neighborhood long run.”
“I can verify there’s a potential choice that’s beneath evaluation now,” she wrote. She didn’t present particulars.
In his written response to questions from The Occasions, Welsh, via his lawyer, mentioned there was dialogue with USPS about transferring again into its former constructing. No additional particulars have been offered.
For now, Bolinas residents proceed to haul as much as Olema — and to lionize the easy pleasure of choosing up their mail domestically. Or, as one native poet put it in an ode penned for a “Save the Submit Workplace” rally:
I’ve gossip to ship to Tomales,
regrets to ship to Limantour Seaside.
But it surely’s Bolinas — all the time Bolinas — I dream of discovering
within the return deal with of a letter despatched to me.
