The post office will return to rural Northern California and fight for it for two years

For more than two years, a large wooden sign in Ximalin County has shown a set of hand-painted numbers, and is dedicated every morning.

The sign reads: “No days in the post office.” Friday's number: 806.

The sign has been a charming, even if sad words, reminded the loss of their beloved post office that started from its downtown buildings amid a quarrel between the U.S. Postal Service and long-time landlords.

However, in the second half of last month, Blinas resident John Borg nailed a new message to the top of the logo – the equivalent of PS's wooden. It reads: “We did it, Bolinas!!! The new post office will be open in fall 2025.”

The post office will soon be moved back to the undecorated wooden building on Brighton Avenue, where it has been in operation for six decades.

On April 17, the Post Office signed a 10-year lease with Ventura County landlord Gregg Welsh, his attorney, Patrick Morris, said in an email.

Reopening is a major victory for rural residents with postal code 94924 – especially given President Trump's meditation on privatizing postal services, which lost $9.5 billion in fiscal 2024 and is cutting thousands of jobs.

“It's really surprising for many of us to get approval during the Trump administration's massive cuts in federal cuts,” Borg, 63, said.

“I think the past two years have allowed our towns to taste what the potential privatization of postal services means for other underserved and rural areas across the country,” he said. “This includes reducing retail operations, delays and inconvenience, price increases… [and] Focus more on the larger communities that can bring more profits. ”

In a haven for poets, painters, writers and actors, residents have been creative in the scope of pushing for the reopening of post offices.

They read with placards: “Real mail, not email!” They participated in local parades, wore letter carriers, wrote songs, and wrote more than 2,000 letters, hand-painted envelopes they sent to postal service officials.

They wrote several poems that they read at loud gatherings. Like this, the author emphasizes:

They closed the Bolinas Post Office down
Forgot that we are isolated, very few town.
Elders need their pensions. examine
Want to know what it is Next.

Most of the people in Bolinas, a town adjacent to the coast of Reyes, have not received delivery of family mail. Residents have long relied on daily parcels, pension checks and mail order prescriptions for post offices, not to mention the chance to catch up with local gossip.

Since the post office closed, their mail has been shipped to the smaller town of Olema (40 minutes round trip through the forest on Highway 1 – the post office has been repeatedly closed due to flooding. Sometimes, it has been diverted to nearby Stinson Beach.

Relocation is not just an inconvenience for the elderly residents of the town, many of whom cannot drive. Public transportation is very small, with 47% of the town’s residents over 65 years of age. Residents reported issues getting mail order prescriptions, lab results, Medicare updates, salary and other software packages.

One sign reads “Save Bolinas Post Office” in Ximalin County.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“It seems like a small thing, but it does affect our town,” said Borg, 63. For the past two years, he has driven two hours a month to and from San Rafael to receive medication at a pharmacy.

Rep. Jared Huffman, a St. Rafael Democrat, lobbied former U.S. Postal Superintendent Louis Dejoy on behalf of Bolinas, saying the post office is reopening, which is “good news.” But, he said in an interview Friday, the process took too long.

“They don't have to experience all of this, but through all the bureaucracy and bulls, which prevents them from owning the post office,” Hoffman said.

The Bolinas Post Office is closed on March 3, 2023.

Bolinas residents sent more than 2,000 envelopes to postal service officials, demanding that their post office be reopened.

(John Borg)

The Welsh family trust owns the building, which it acquired about 50 years ago. Postal service is already a tenant. According to a statement last year through its attorney Patrick Morris, Wales has violated its leases for years, requiring it to maintain and repair the floor at its own expense.

The agency found asbestos in floor tiles in 1998, but essentially it hid it in the landlord for more than two decades and issued no warning signs, the statement said. Wales and Postal Services strive to get who should reduce the cost of asbestos and repairing worn and broken floor tiles.

According to a statement from Wales, the postal service lease ended in January 2022, but USPS continued to occupy the lease for the building as a “traumatic tenant”. In February 2023, Wales asked the post office to evacuate the building within one month.

Lawyer Morris said in an email last week that the Post Office has not told Wales when it hopes to move back to the building, despite the new lease being signed by the parties.

Morris said that while most floors appear to have been replaced and “asbestos clearance” is available, the postal service has not provided customer details about its work.

Bay Area-based USPS spokeswoman Kristina Uppal told The Times in an email that she could not provide details about the lease negotiations, but the Post is expected to be completed after Bolinas resumes “all necessary construction in early 2025.”

On March 13, then-host Dejoy wrote in a letter to several members of Congress that the Postal Service will cancel 10,000 positions within 30 days through a voluntary early retirement plan, and that it has canceled about 30,000 positions since 2021. The letter said he had signed an agreement with the general services of the White House Advisory Group of Tillionaire Elon Musk and determined the total cost of the family to determine efficiency, to determine efficiency.

Dejoy resigned on March 24.

On Friday, the Post Office's board of directors announced that it chose David Steiner as a board member of USPS rival FedEx and would become the next postmaster. Critics, including national associations. Among the letter carriers of the union representing about 295,000 mail carriers, they feared that his choice would speed up the privatization of independent institutions.

Hoffman said in the fight against the Brinas Post Office, he found that the Post Office, a once-cabinet-level department, had worked as an independent agency for half a century, was unresponsive and sometimes “deeply irresponsible.”

But taking it private, he said, “will make things worse.”

Since 1863, Bolinas has had a post office.

After the post office is closed, there is no viable commercial real estate in the town that can be relocated. Over the past 54 years, the 1971 water meter moratorium (because of limited water supply) effectively banned new developments.

At one point, residents drafted a detailed proposal for the temporary facility – a mobile office trailer in the parking lot next to the fire department – ​​and offered to raise $50,000 for its installation. They sent the program to a supportive Hoffman who shipped it to Dejoy to no avail.

Kent Khtikian, a 39-year-old Bolinas resident, said his friends and neighbors hoped the new post office was in trouble after Trump returned to the White House, partly because they lived in super-liberal Marin County, where 81% of voters called up votes for Kamala Harris in the November presidential election compared to 17% of Who Choose Prompter.

John Borg hung a sign outside the post office in Bolinas, California on Friday.

(Chris Borg)

“Getting the post office back is certainly a relief,” said Khtikian, a retired lawyer who helped the citizen campaign. “While there are certainly bigger problems in the world, this is an example of people not giving up, not discouraged and trusting themselves in their ability to work.”

Enzo Resta, a longtime resident and founder of the Bolinas Film Festival, compared the Bolinas Post Office to the Italian Piazza, a chance running venue and “poetry of community participation.”

“Seeing all walks of life, all demographics, all ages, all personal interests, all cultural interests are integrated: This part of our community is important,” Resta said.

As of Friday, there is a new hand-painted logo in town.

Posted on the exterior wall of the still closed post office, it reads: “Upcoming Autumn 2025 Bolinas Post Office 94924. Hooray!”