The Wakulla Sun Archive 10.20.22

Neighborhood complaints

They kept the East Pecan Street name, but they aren’t getting their mail delivered

Hammocks resident Barry Toohey at his East Sycamore home.

By WILLIAM SNOWDEN Editor

After lots of complaints from the residents on East Pecan Street, the county decided that the street could keep its name.

The county sent out a letter back in August saying the name of the street was “easily confused with other street names in the same response area” for 911 and emergency service personnel.

Residents complained about having moved into the new development only months ago and face having to go through more change of address problems. (The Sun reported on the issue in the Sept. 15 issue, “Bye, East Pecan St.”) The county gave in – and emergency dispatchers will be able to guide emergency vehicles to the correct address.

But now residents in the Hammocks subdivision off Songbird Ave., some 27 new homeowners are complaining that they haven’t had mail delivered since they moved in.

Resident Barry Toohey, who lives on East Sycamore, said it’s been four months and there’s still no mail kiosk for the homes – and residents have to go to the post office to get their mail.

Toohey said there was initially some finger-pointing between developer Ben Boynton and builder D.R. Horton Homes.

County Commissioner Mike Kemp, who lives nearby, said he was contacted by residents. “That’s not right,” he said of the situation. “Some of these people have these people have been going to the post office (to pick up their mail) for four months.

“The kiosk should be in there when they sell the first house,” Kemp said. He is looking at creating some kind of county requirement that mail kiosks be in place.

Planning Director Somer Pell said she’s been told that Horton has a kiosk on the way that will be delivered soon. She noted that it was also a problem for residents at Chadwick Estates, who didn’t get mail for more than a year.

“I’m not sure why, but it takes a long time to get these kiosks,” Pell said.

She noted that builder Mike Pafford went ahead and put up a mail kiosk at Spears Crossing before building houses after having similar problems when develop Elm Ridge.