CLAYPOOL – A Village Post Office will open at Red’s Sweets in Claypool Friday. The VPO will sell stamps and accept first-class priority mail packages from 2 to 8 p.m. Monday to Saturday. The Warsaw Post Office will pick up and deliver the packages from the shop every day. The grand opening for the VPO is Friday from 11 a.m. to noon at the bakery at 111 S. Main St., Claypool. Postal Service and Claypool town representatives will speak at the brief ceremony, and cake will be available for guests, said Dave Morgan, who with wife Connie Morgan runs Red’s Sweets. He said the couple applied to run post office services out of their shop when they heard that the Claypool office would be reducing its hours. The office lobby will still be available for mail pickup but window services like stamp sales will only be available four hours a day. Window hours for the town post office were reduced last month to 8 a.m. to noon based on surveys the U.S. Postal Service mailed in the spring to residents, only 28 of whom responded, according to Dave Morgan. About a dozen or so people attended the town meeting that followed, said Warsaw Postmaster Kevin Baird. “I think this will be good for the community,” Baird said this morning, noting it will still let residents buy stamps and deliver packages every day. “The Village Post Office is kind of pushing what the Post Office would like to do in the future in smaller communities like this, where they have the opportunity to still have postal operations and it’s done from the community aspect, out of a local store.” Dave Morgan said Red’s has a one-year contract for the VPO and they plan to offer it for at least two years.
