Residents are upset with the “debacle” at a temporary postal station in The Villages.
This past week, demolition work began in earnest in the area surrounding the former site of the Hacienda Hills Country Club, which was torn down in 2020. The Villages will be building a new villa community and the work has necessitated the closure of the old Hacienda Hills Postal Station, which will be reconstructed. For now, residents are picking up their mail at a nearby temporary trailer facility.
Villager Ken Knodel said the temporary facility has become a “debacle” and spoke out Wednesday morning before the Amenity Authority Committee.
“If you stood out there with a legal pad, you would fill it up with all of the complaints from residents who have to use that thing,” he said.
He detailed the plight of a woman with a walker who has been having difficulty getting up a ramp at the temporary postal station. He said the progress she makes climbing up the ramp is negated every time she slides backward.
“We should not expect older residents to have to maneuver like this to get their mail,” Knodel said.
He also complained that closing the multi-modal path tunnel and funneling more golf cart traffic onto Morse Boulevard during the height of snowbird season is an accident waiting to happen.
“We all know that Morse Boulevard is a disastrous mess,” he said.
He added that the poor directional signage is making a bad situation even worse.
Villager Judy Biebesheimer, who is also a Community Development District 1 supervisor, said she knows a Villager who is unable to pick up her mail and had to turn in a signed permission slip so a friend could pick it up for her.
“How is that even legal? How do you know she even wrote that note?” Biebesheimer asked the AAC members.
Normally, a friend would simply use the mailbox key to retrieve mail for another resident. However, there are no mailboxes at the temporary facility, which is restricted to daytime hours. Community Watch is distributing the mail.
Earlier this week when speaking before the Project Wide Advisory Committee, Community Watch Chief Nehemiah Wolfe saluted his staffers who are working at the temporary mail facility.
“We are providing a service by distributing mail to our residents. We don’t sort, we distribute,” he said.
AAC member Don Deakin acknowledged there has been a disruption for residents, but said the situation could have been far worse.
“You might have had to go to the Lady Lake Post Office to pick up your mail,” Deakin said.
He also encouraged residents to be patient.
“This could take a year or more,” he said.