The Boston City Council held an emergency hearing on late mail delivery. The USPS didn't show up.

During an emergency hearing Tuesday, members of the Boston City Council heard testimony accusing United States Postal Service leaders of mismanagement that is causing significant delays in service. Adding to frustrations, the USPS declined to send a representative to testify before the councilors. 

Councilors Sharon Durkan, Henry Santana, and Ben Weber filed a hearing order last month to investigate a “lack of adequate postal services” in Boston’s Mission Hill neighborhood. Both businesses and residents alike have been impacted, and complaints have come in from all around the city, Durkan said Tuesday. 

“Let me be clear about what we’re experiencing in our communities. Residents are missing critical communications including legal documents and financial statements. Vulnerable neighbors are experiencing delays in vital medications. Small businesses are struggling with unreliable mail services,” Durkan said. “Most critically, as we approach election season, unreliable postal service threatens to undermine our democratic process.”

USPS spokespeople did not return a request for comment Wednesday morning. 

Councilors were accidentally forwarded internal emails ahead of the hearing in which a USPS official accused the council of having a political agenda and not caring about customers, according to Durkan. Multiple councilors expressed outrage at the accusation. 

“It’s outrageous that someone from the post office has accused us of having a political agenda. Our agenda is to make sure Boston residents get their mail. That they get their checks, that they get their medication, that they get their ballots,” Weber said. “That’s not political, it’s just ensuring that residents of Boston have a basic public service.”

Leaders from three different unions that represent USPS workers in the Boston area testified at the hearing. One of the core issues is “whimsical” operating hours at post offices, according to Scott Hoffman, a national business agent representing USPS clerks in the New England region of the American Postal Workers Union. Early and consistent closures are caused by the reluctance of USPS leadership to properly staff them, even though staff members are frequently available to work. 

“The additional lost time due to improper closings just feeds the formula to staff lower, which in turn degrades service. It’s a built-in system that is designed to spiral downward,” Hoffman said.

The flow of mail through the USPS system can get clogged in multiple ways, he said. Due to staffing shortages, employees will be assigned to work customer service windows at the expense of behind-the-scenes work facilitating the distribution of mail. USPS leaders will force trucks not to leave offices for mail deliveries until they are at full capacity, something Hoffman compared to a bus operator delaying an evening bus until the following morning because all the seats are not full. 

This fell in line with a consistent theme of the complaints about management: that decisions are being made for business reasons with little to no consideration for the service disruptions they cause. On top of that, subpar employee retention is causing the workers who remain to be inundated with massive workloads. 

Multiple residents testified about their experiences. They described instances of not receiving vital health care through the mail, delays of crucial paychecks, and issues with insurance coverage caused by USPS service problems. Mitch Hilton, who worked as a letter carrier for more than 35 before retiring in 2006, said that he has seen a marked change in service since that time. Hilton recorded 44 instances of his mail not being delivered on time so far this year, he said, with September being the worst month for on-time delivery. 

Mail service in the Boston area is “current and within performance standards,” a spokesperson for the USPS Northeast region told The Boston Globe in September. Almost all first class mail in Massachusetts during the last quarter of the fiscal year arrived “within a day of the service standard. On average, mail in the state is delivered in 2.5 days.”

Last month, the USPS recorded an 89% on-time delivery rate for first class mail in a district consisting of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, according to the agency’s online service performance dashboard. Just over 96% of first class mail was delivered with one additional day, according to the dashboard, and it took an average of 2.6 days for mail to be delivered. 

Durkan voiced skepticism about the accuracy of the metrics published by the USPS.

“If I believed their weekly performance standards were correct based on what I’m hearing from constituents, I would not have called for this hearing,” she said. “We’re being gaslit in Boston. We’re being gaslit.”