By JOAN MCCOY
Leader staff writer
Cabot Mayor Eddie Joe Williams went to Washington in April, in part to ask for a post office on the west side of town.
What he has been offered instead is a contract postal unit (CPU) that would be located in an existing business and offer most of the services of a regular post office.
Karen Davis, the mayor’s director of operations, said Monday that the U.S. Postal Service has informed the mayor in a letter that due to “facility guidelines and space requirements” Cabot doesn’t qualify for a post office at this time.
But with such a cryptic explanation, Davis says she doesn’t know what the problem is and neither does the mayor. So she has written to Cong. Marion Berry, D-Gillett, asking him to get more information.
“We want to know what we have to do to get it,” Davis said.
The current facility is frequently overcrowded and the parking lot is too small, she said.
The Postal Service is evaluating four area businesses as possible CPUs, she said. It is not known when one will be selected.
When the mayor was in Washington, he also spoke to Berry about a National Guard readiness center and money for a north interchange, two other large projects that he would like to see started while he is mayor.
Cabot is almost certain to get the $8 million readiness center if the city can provide the land, he told a group of AARP members last week. And Berry has promised $1 million for preliminary work on the north interchange.
