The U.S. Postal Service has reopened a post office on Main Street in Vermont’s capital city, 15 months after the original location was closed by a devastating flood. The announcement came Monday, not a moment too soon for Montpelier residents and local leaders who had pleaded for months with Vermont’s congressional delegation to help get the postal service moving. “Hooray and please welcome back our intrepid post office clerks to serving the public in downtown Montpelier!” one person responded to the news on Facebook. [content-2] The postal service installed post office boxes at the new location over the summer. On Monday, it started offering mail and package shipping, postage sales and mailing supplies, the postal service said in a statement. "We thank our loyal customers for their patience as we underwent the process of seeking out a new location after last year's flooding," the statement said. A grand reopening is scheduled for Saturday, October 12. Many peoples' patience with the situation expired months ago. "There was an opportunity for the postal service to show real leadership in helping a community to recover from a disaster. Instead they made it harder," said Ben Doyle, chair of the Montpelier Commission on Recovery and Resilience, which formed after the flood of July 2023 caused millions of dollars worth of damage to homes and businesses. Doyle has been rallying residents lately to contact Postmaster General Louis DeJoy directly with their complaints about the post office situation. “Our community can now focus on other aspects of the recovery that are frankly more important," Doyle said on Monday. "But it’s just unfortunate that it took more than 450 days to get here." The 2023 flood closed several businesses, emptying Montpelier’s streets in mid-summer, one of the busiest times of year. And since the pandemic, merchants have been contending with a drop in daytime visitor traffic as office workers who used to occupy downtown buildings have chosen to work at home. Doyle and others hope the return of the post office will help. “The post office is a big draw for a lot of people,” said Kelly Sullivan, who owns Splash Naturals, a large natural body products shop that also sells clothing and accessories on Main Street. [content-1] Sullivan’s been a downtown merchant for 20 years, and she used to rely on the post office to drop off packages for mail orders. After it closed, she…