WARNING: THIS POST IS ESSENTIALLY A LONG, RAMBLING RANT! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Unless you have been living under a rock lately, you are likely aware of the budget crisis the U.S. Post Office has been facing. One of the solutions they have been looking at on a national level is closing Post Offices, many of which are in rural areas. It shouldn't be unexpected that patrons of small town Post Offices are upset. Town Hall-style meetings conducted by USPS have been held in communities whose Post Office is on the danger list. This article from today's Great Falls Tribune
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20111013/NEWS01/110130301/Post-offices-face-budget-axe gives a brief overview. Community members can go to the meeting as a show of support, ask questions and voice their opinions.
Around here, Joplin, Inverness, Hingham, and Kremlin are all slated to close; Rudyard and Gildford would keep their offices. To be included on the closure list, a Post Office must have less than two hours of mail-related work per day (sorting and handling of mail, decided based on some formula), and less than $27,500 of annual revenue. In each of these offices, there is a single postmaster and no additional staff. Though they may have a relatively small volume of mail they handle, they are also responsible for all aspects of customer service, including building and site maintenance-- shoveling snow, mowing grass, etc.
Last night I met Tom and Carol in Inverness, which is home to one of the Post Offices on "The List," for the Inverness Post Office Town Hall Meeting. To be honest, there was a larger gathering of local residents than I expected-- maybe around seventy people. Our Postmaster had attended a few of the other local town hall meetings held recently and said that we had a bigger crowd, and a more vocal crowd. Even though I haven't lived here very long, I felt a sense of pride being among those gathered to voice their opinion, and a definite sense of feeling like I was part of the community. I can only imagine how it must have made our Postmaster feel to see people turn out in good numbers to try to save our Post Office, and consequently, her job.
There was the entire range of questions asked, points made, and fingers pointed that one would expect. Some comments were inane and unnecessary, others were extremely well-thought.
One general theme that I noticed was a definite sense of rural discrimination. A majority of post office closures are slated for rural areas; urban areas have a lower percentage of closures on the list. For example, thousands of offices are on the closure list nation wide. New York City has thirty seven. One of the major complaints of residents there is that they may have to walk more than two blocks to get their mail. Two blocks. Many people in rural areas have to drive much farther than two blocks to get their mail, which is often only delivered two or three days a week anyway. People definitely feel like rural areas are being underserved already, and by closing more post offices, even more services would be stripped. The United States Postal SERVICE-- how do closures serve the people?
People worry about not having consistent access to their mail and services the Post Office provides, such as selling stamps. Sure, you can buy stamps online. But here, a large percentage of the population is elderly-- not likely to spend much time online buying stamps or anything else. Additionally, the point was made about medications received through the mail. Are people supposed to let their temperature-sensative medications sit in an unprotected cluster box that would be erected in lieu of an actual post office building? They could get a new PO Box in a neighboring town that does have an actual building, which would mean driving farther away... putting more elderly drivers on the road, etc.
As of now, the solutions presented have all been relating to eliminating offices, restricting services, etc. What about a different approach? Rather than making cuts, couldn't the USPS look at the way it operates in new and creative ways? One person made the comment that right now, it is an "urban solution being forced on rural America." Montana is a very, very different state from New York.
What if individual Post Offices were given more autonomy? If they were operated and managed as small businesses or franchises, operating within their own individual budget and doing what was necessary to survive for that unique office in that unique community?
What if the USPS was governed by individual states, rather than as a Federal entity. Similar to the Department of Transportation, for example. Each state could come up with feasible plans to manage their own postal service system.
Right now, a Post Office's income is generated only by mail it sends out. What if income could be split between the outgoing post office and the recipient post office and any office that piece of mail stops at in between? People handle the mail at both ends of the chain, so they should all be credited, right? It would be interesting to see how profitability and revenue numbers would change if that were the case.
I'm not going to come up with the solution here. I'm certainly not educated enough about all aspects of the post office to do that. They say the important thing is to reach out to our congressional leaders-- write letters (buy your stamp at the local Post Office!) and let our voices be heard that way. For Inverness, last night's showing at the meeting was encouraging. It is possible to save our office, at least, if we all do our part and tell Rehberg, Tester, and Baucus what our Post Office means to us, and what it would mean to lose it.
There's many more points to argue, but I have probably rambled enough here. Time to start my letter to the Senator.
