Petaluma, Rohnert Park plan passport fairs to cut wait times

Soccer fans Molly and Ivy Lea’s hopes of attending the Women’s World Cup final in Vancouver were nearly dashed last week their father found out it would take a month and a half to schedule a passport application appointment at the Santa Rosa Main Post Office.

The game was scheduled for July 5, and even if the Santa Rosa family would have paid extra money for an expedited passport it would have been cutting it close. In the end, a canceled appointment made it possible for Molly, 15, and Ivy, 14, to apply for their first passports on Friday.

“We had to pull the girls out of school an hour early,” said their mother Anna Lea during their visit to the post office Friday afternoon.

With summer vacation fast approaching, passport appointments at local post offices are filling up fast. Like Santa Rosa, the Petaluma Post Office currently has a six-week wait for passport appointments.

At the Rohnert Park Post Office, appointments are scheduled in the morning each day beginning at 9 a.m. The 15 minutes slots fill up by 9:20 a.m.

Local postal officials say the demand usually ramps up during the spring, ahead of summer trips, and in the fall, ahead of holiday vacations. In an effort to relieve some of the pressure of the current passport crunch, the Petaluma Post Office is hosting a “passport fair” Saturday at its branch at 1150 North McDowell Boulevard, from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Officials are bracing for a big crowd.

“Generally we do a lot of passports at the fair,” said Joseph Machado, postmaster for the Petaluma Post Office. “The last one we did was about 168 applications.”

The Rohnert Park Post Office has a fair scheduled for May 23, said Flora Smith, a postal clerk with the office. That fair will be held at 150 City Center Drive, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Smith said the next week’s fair, like Saturday’s, will be first-come first-served. Both routine and expedited passport requests will be processed.

Machado and Smith said applicants should have their have their applications filled out and to bring all the necessary identification documents, such as birth certificates and old passports.

“We always suggest to people to have everything filled out before they come in,” Smith said, adding that passport photos will be taken during the fair for $15.

The cost of applying for a passport is $110 for adults 16 and older, plus a $25 processing fee. The cost for kids under 16 is $80, plus the $25 processing fee.

It takes up to four weeks for the State Department to process and mail a routine passport. Expedited passports take up to two weeks and cost an extra $60 for both adults and children.

Christina Rivera, a sales and service associate at the main Santa Rosa Post Office, said passport fairs also can clear out looming backlogs and free up postal workers for their regular work.

Rivera is among just a few postal workers who are specially trained to receive passport applications. The trained postal clerks do both passport applications and routine postal work.

“Passport fairs that are done on Saturdays alleviate a lot of the congestion,” Rivera said.

Jason Lea, the father of Molly and Ivy, said he would have had to attend Saturday’s passport fair in Petaluma were it not for the cancellation.

On average, a typical passport application takes about 15 minutes to process, a time period during which a postal clerk would normally serve about five to eight customers, said Machado, the Petaluma postmaster. As part of the process, the clerk must ensure that the forms are filled out correctly and must verify the identity of the applicant. Applicants must also swear an oath to their identify before the clerk.

All the required documents for passport applications are listed on the State Department’s website, travel.state.gov, or the U.S. Post Office’s website, usps.com/international/passports.htm.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.