WILLISTON, N.D. – Senator John Hoeven today joined the Williston community at a ribbon cutting ceremony to mark the grand opening of the Badlands Postal Facility, the community’s new retail post office. Hoeven has been working with the Postmaster General as well as local and regional postal officials on an ongoing basis to improve service to the rapidly growing western part of the state.
“Last August, we hosted the Postmaster General in Williston and showed him potential sites for a much-needed new postal facility for this growing community,” said Hoeven. “Today, we celebrate the opening of this full-service facility. We appreciate all those, including our local postal officials, who worked so hard to make this post office a reality.”
Hoeven said that this new post office and additional resources will ensure the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is providing better service to customers in Williston. At the same time, improved services will help to generate greater revenue for the agency, which is important because USPS is losing money nationally. Revenues from growth areas combined with better cost savings will help the postal service address its deficit.
To improve postal services in Williston, Hoeven invited USPS Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe to visit the region to hear from local business leaders, community officials and postal employees about challenges to mail delivery in western North Dakota. In March, Donahoe approved the lease for the new facility that occupies a 5,880-square-foot site in the Badlands Town Center located at 4315 9th Ave. W., Unit 411 in Williston.
The new post office has more than 2,800 new post office boxes, a full service window with three clerks and a self-service kiosk in the lobby which offers customers round-the-clock access to buy stamps, track packages and obtain other services. The facility is open Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Saturday.
In addition to Donahoe’s visit, Hoeven has worked with the USPS to help increase the number of postal employees in the Bakken region, and in February the USPS entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Rural Letter Carriers Association to grant pay increases and bonuses to recruit and retain rural carriers in Williston, Minot, Dickinson, Watford City and most of the communities in western North Dakota.
The Postal Service has also enacted a number of oil field initiatives to enhance customer experiences including:
• Expanded customer access to postal products and services with a contract postal unit at a Watford City grocery store and a Village Post Office facility in Tioga
• Added 460 additional Post Office Boxes in Parshall
• Added more than 2,000 new delivery points in the region since September 2013
• Deployed state-of-the-art mobile retail technology, creating simple transactions for customers in the Post Office lobby
• Established cluster box delivery for residential corporate housing and new developments
• Established Consumer Advisory Councils in local communities to keep customers and the community informed and to help address customer concerns
• Aggressively recruiting new employees and developing strategies to encourage current career employees to transfer to the region
• Establishing customer relations coordinator and transportation specialist positions to serve the Bakken Oil Field region