to require

adjustment

By Linda Lemmon

Town Crier Editor

For some in the northeast corner, taking your regular jaunt to the local post office may require some adjustment.

The U.S. Postal Service, plagued by red ink for many years, adjusted the hours of some post offices, including a few in northeastern Connecticut.

The two post offices experiencing the biggest hours cuts Jan. 9 are the East Woodstock Post Office and the South Woodstock Post Office.

In East Woodstock the hours for the Window will be from 8 a.m. to noon Monday through Friday and from 7:30 a.m. to noon on Saturday. The Lobby will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week; however, there may be times  after 12 noon when the door will be locked to safeguard mail waiting for pickup by the postal service.

In South Woodstock the Window hours will be from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday, the Window hours will be from 8 to 11 a.m. The Lobby hours will be from 8:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 8:15 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturdays.

The hours for the Pomfret Post Office were changed in May. The Window hours are from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (closed from 1 to 1:30 p.m. for lunch). The Window hours on Saturdays are from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. The Lobby is open 24 hours.

The Eastford Post Office hours for the Window will be from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with a lunch break from noon to 1 p.m. On Saturday the Window hours are from 8:30 a.m. to noon. The Lobby hours are from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m Monday through Saturday.

The hours  at the Pomfret Center Post Office are unchanged as are the hours at the Putnam Post Office.

 

Then

This is the Basto homestead in 1917 in South Woodstock. It cost $80,000 to build.  Photos courtesy of Judith Basto Sevcik.

 

& Now

This is the same building today. It's on Peake Brook Road in S. Woodstock.

 

 

PUTNAM — Thomas A. Borner, president  and CEO of Putnam Bank,  announced recently that its Application  for a Connecticut State Banking Charter, with Federal Reserve membership,  has been approved. 

“This is an important structural change” said Borner. “This will serve to reinforce our eastern Connecticut-based community commitment.”

 Putnam Bank was originally chartered in Connecticut in 1862 as Putnam Savings Bank and has maintained its headquarters  in Putnam while its branch network  has grown to eight branches along the Route 395 corridor to Gales Ferry. 

Current assets stand at $477 million. After the regulatory broadening of lending products in the 1980s between savings banks and commercial banks the bank dropped “Savings” from its name to Putnam Bank. 

The charter was converted to a federal charter in 2003 under the federal agency of the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS). Congress dissolved the OTS as part of its recent banking reform, renewing the opportunity to convert the charter to one more favorable to a community bank.

“This will serve to confirm  our dominant presence as not only a major retail lender of mortgages and home equity loans, but also our ever expanding commercial portfolio” according to Borner. “Our identity as a long serving eastern Connecticut bank is very important to us and to our customers. This change will be seem less to our customers in any fashion and rather will ease some of the regulatory burden and reduce expense to the bank,” he added.