New Los Angeles Postmaster addresses late mail deliveries in Brentwood.
By Sam Catanzaro
At the regular Brentwood Community Council meeting Joe Zapata, the new United States Postal Service’s (USPS) Postmaster for Los Angeles, answered questions residents had regarding late deliveries that have been plaguing certain areas of Brentwood recently.
“I think our internal testing has shown that we can improve our service in our lobbies and reducing the wait time and providing better service,” Zapata said. “My goal is to have all carriers out by 5 o’clock,”
Zapata, who has only been in the position of postmaster since May 26, said that in his time late deliveries have gone down.
“We’ve actually cut our complaints in half in the last month or so. We’ve reduced our late carriers by about 15 percent, but we still have some complement issues that we’re working on. I believe that will resolve itself very shortly here, the late delivery,” Zapata said.
Zapata said that the late deliveries are due to not having enough mail carriers on the Westside, where the turnover for mail-delivery personnel is very high. To address this, Zapata says the USPS is hiring more mailmen and women to address the tardiness in delivery areas such as Brentwood have been seeing.
“We are in a very aggressive hiring process right now, trying to staff up to eliminate the late delivery,” Zapata said. “There is constant turnover on this side of town for carriers that may want to move closer to wherever they live.”
Zapata also addressed questions about mail theft in Brentwood, an issue a number of BCC meeting attendees brought up. If you are the victim of postal theft, Zapata said the most important thing to do is contact the Postal Inspection Service.
“They are aggressively addressing mail theft issues, but the best way to get some attention around it is to let someone know because they monitor mail theft complaints. When where they see a pattern, they will investigate,” Zapata said.
Contact the local postal inspector by calling 877.876.2455.
