Postal Branch Has New Postmaster
Joel Smith, a 15-year veteran with the U.S. Postal Service, is the new postmaster of the Agoura Hills branch.
Smith, 36, has been in the position for about a month, but will be officially installed in his new $55,000-a-year post Friday. The West Hills resident oversees postal operations--including delivery and collection of mail--on 27 city routes.
Prior to his appointment in Agoura Hills, Smith held management positions in the Van Nuys District, most recently as manager of customer service at the Sherman Oaks branch.
He also spent 12 years as a carrier in Thousand Oaks and says being at Agoura Hills is “like coming home.”
But he’s coming home to a different post office than the one where he started. He and his staff members will work on implementing the postal service’s new Delivery Point Sequence system, or DPS. The automated system, installed in the post office two months ago, reduces the sorting time spent by carriers before delivery, he said.
“It’s challenging,” Smith said of the transition, “because it is a very new system compared to the way we’ve conducted business for the past 200 years.”
The Agoura Hills branch serves about 45,000 people and has annual revenue of more than $5 million. Smith will be assisted by three supervisors and 73 employees.
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