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BERMUDA RUN — It’s the holiday season, but that doesn’t translate into the best of times for those residents in Bermuda Run East waiting to receive packages through the U.S. Postal Service.

During last Tuesday night’s Bermuda Run Town Council meeting, Andrew Meadwell’s town manager’s comments concentrated “on a continuing issue with parcels and packages being delivered to the Bermuda Run East package room. These delivered are unlike any of our other neighborhoods in our town where if the postal service delivers a parcel, if they don’t fit into a parcel locker, they are taken to the residents’ home.”

That’s the case at Bermuda Run West and Kinderton Village, according to Meadwell, but not so at the small building about a half mile from the U.S. 158 entrance — at the roundabout — where some 750 residents/households out of about 925 in Bermuda Run East’s gated community receive their mail in parcel lockers from the USPS. If they don’t fit there, they are put in a small room of about 7 feet by 9 feet that is used to place all packages for pickup by residents.

“As you can imagine with the number of packages that we receive, that room fills up,” Meadwell said. 

Mayor Mike Brannon said he and Meadwell have been working aggressively since January trying to get this issue resolved but to no avail, adding that the problem has been compounded by no longer notifying residents about the arrival of parcels that don’t fit in the individual boxes.

“I want to be careful what I say here because I do still want to get my mail delivery,” Brannon said. “I’ve driven through all of our neighborhoods. I’ve taken pictures. Every neighborhood in our town has kiosks. You have mail that is delivered. You have postal boxes down below. If there are insufficient space for more boxes, they do deliver to homes. 

“In Bermuda Run East, we have what I call the Holiday Mount Vesuvius that starts to spill out from the package room and that in combination in the old days, parcel notes were placed into people’s mailboxes to say you have a parcel to know to come back and collect your parcel. That has now stopped. So not only do we have copious amounts of packages stacking up, we have residents who have no idea they may ever see the package, especially from someone else that is shipped to you.”

The small post office building that houses all of the mailboxes for Bermuda Run East residents is a U-shaped area with a bank of keyed-post office boxes along with the package room that remains locked except when a person contracted by the town comes to coordinate giving residents their packages from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.

“Packages are not organized by the USPS,” Brannon said. “They are simply stacked in the room and the worker who arrives at 3 p.m. attempts to organize things in order to locate packages. Things are quite hectic this time of year with the volume of packages arriving every day from the USPS being simply unsustainable. All of us receive our Amazon, FedEx and other packages directly to our door.”

To try to help with the package room issues, a couple of years ago Brannon said that the town invested in the installation of a bank of 80 lockers for packages. 

“This added set of lockers did improve the issues, but with the sheer volume of packages for so many residents, even these lockers barely made a dent,” he said. “So, ultimately, if the town removes the package room and replaces it with yet more lockers, which we are prepared to do, there must be an agreement by the USPS to deliver to homes once all the lockers are filled. They simply will not agree to do that.”

Cheryl Burleson, who is the postmaster in Advance, later said when asked for comment that once the USPS establishes a delivery point, it can’t be changed. 

“That’s how it’s set up in the book of the United States Postal Service,” she said. “Bermuda Run has gone way above me at the district level. I know that they have tried to do it every way, but the postal service up above my level has told them that they can’t change it. I can’t go against my higher ups.”

When asked about the parcel notifications no longer being included, Burleson said that would need to be addressed by her supervisor, C.J. Herrera.

“That’s something that would have to go from the higher ups at this point,” he said. “It would be the Greensboro District. That would be the method of addressing it. All of this stuff was previously orchestrated through them.”

“From my understanding, the person that was over it in Greensboro put it in stone whenever they had that meeting the last time that that was the method of delivery, and for us to negotiate back, I think would definitely justify for a meeting.”

Herrera said he was aware of Bermuda Run looking into getting more lockers but added he was at another office during the time, and “it seemed that the management here and the town maybe had a disagreement, a falling out at that time.”

Brannon said that he and Meadwell thought they had secured an agreement with the postmaster for Advance to eliminate the package room and purchase more lockers that would be placed in that area — essentially eliminating the current in-person pickup. 

“We understood that the USPS would then deliver excess packages to homes once all lockers were in place,” Brannon said. “Instead, just as we were finalizing the design and purchase of additional lockers, the USPS told us that they would not deliver to homes but instead would require residents come to the Advance postal facility to retrieve extra packages. They also said they never agreed to deliver to homes.”

That pushed the town to reach out to N.C. Sen. Thom Tillis for help.

“So, from a town perspective, there is no way we would ever agree to spend money for new lockers — just to then require residents from Bermuda Run East to drive to the Advance post office to retrieve packages,” Brannon said. “The bottom line is we thought we had a plan for USPS to deliver to homes. The postmaster says they never agreed to that. At that point, I realized these discussions were no longer fruitful, and that’s when I made the move to connect with Tillis’ office as it was clear there was no path forward with the postmaster.” 

Herrera admitted that the setup in Bermuda Run East is unlike anything he and many others have ever seen, but that doesn’t mean there’s no chance for some kind of solution.

“That Bermuda Run East post office is an anomaly for the Postal Service,” he said. “That’s probably the one and only in this country like that. It’s completely different. We’re working with what we’ve got.”

“It‘s just a matter of getting in touch with the district and giving them the customers’ perspective on that,” Herrera added. “In other words at this point, in my position being the supervisor here, my hands are tied. I would say in other words, it’s above my pay grade. But I do see the concern and the reasoning and why you would want that 100 percent.”