Smyrna Times

POST TO BE BUILT
Eight Towns in Delaware Are Being Considered For New Buildings
$85,000 AVERAGE

Eight towns in Delaware are listed for new postoffices, to cost nearly $700,000 by 1945 construction cost figures, which are much higher now, by the Postoffice Department. It is not expected, however, any of the construction jobs will be undertaken immediately and it will be many years, postoffice officials say, before all are constructed.

The towns for which new postoffices are listed are: Bridgeville, Claymont, Delaware City, Delmar, Marshallton, Middletown, Millsboro all second class postoffices, and Newport, which two years ago was made a classified station of the Wilmington postoffice.

$85,000 Average Cost

It was estimated last year the cost of each office would be approximately $85,000. At present all of the eight postoffices listed above are in quarters leased by the government from private owners.

Charles A. McCracken, postoffice inspector for Delaware and the Eastern Shore, with an office in the Wilmington Postoffice Building, said there is no immediate expectation of construction of the offices.

At the Postoffice Department in Washington it was explained the department first reports to the Federal Works Agency where it thinks the new postoffices should be constructed. Any city or town reporting postoffice receipts of $10,000 or more a year is eligible, as is any city or town which can show its present facilities are no longer adequate.

Decision by Congress

The FWA places the list of prospective postoffices together with other public buildings, and the combined list is submitted to Congress which decides which offices will be built and how much is to be spent. There have been no postoffices constructed since 1940. Contracts not complete in the fall of that year were finished, but no new ones undertaken. When Congress returns in January a new list, the first post-war list, will be submitted to it for consideration. Postoffices with receipts which dropped below $10,000 in 1945 will be eliminated from the list. Before the war the practice was to construct one new postoffice in each congressional district each year at a cost of about $70,000,000 annually.

It is estimated the same program would now cost as much as $200,000,000 because of increased building costs.