Region’s rural post offices stay open, but hours cut
May 9, 2012 at 7:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
Maybe it was the hundreds of signatures on the petition. Or the packed house for the public meeting, the huge oversized card and envelope sent with their comments, the banner hung across State Highway 23, or constant contact with state and federal legislators.
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We will never solve the financial problems of the post office if we don’t “man-up” and make the tough decisions. The post office simply must respond to a changing marketplace…rather than pretend email and text messaging are not there, they need to embrace the change and change the way in which they deliver services. It seems elemental to eliminate Saturday mail service and to close small post offices where traffic does not warrant them.
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duluthvoice, stop it! You’re making too much sense! For that reason alone, your proposals would never fly.
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The financial black hole they’re in started in 2006 when they were mandated to prefund retiree healthcare expenses for existing employees. And rather than spread those payments out over a 75-year span like any other business would’ve done, the USPS was mandated to do it within ten years AND prefund it at 100%. That meant coming up with $6 BILLION a year that they didn’t have. You might not be aware that the USPS is not allowed to make a profit. They don’t have huge stashes of cash laying around. And they weren’t allowed to increase the price of stamps or services beyond the rate of inflation to pay for it. That meant effectively operating at a $6 billion per year loss for ten years.
It’s got nothing whatsoever to do with letter mail or electronic bill paying or email. How much profit do you think there is in picking up a piece of mail at someone’s front door in Florida and delivering it to someone else’s front door in California when the sender paid less than 50 cents? I wouldn’t walk your letter across the street for 50 cents. By the time a letter carrier drives up and parks on your street, they’ve already lost money. They don’t make money on letter mail and never have.
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Well put, DanH. The idea that the USPS hasn’t adapted to email/e-pay is uninformed at best. They were dealing with those issues before most people even knew what email was. The USPS is a great service, unifies our nation, has an esteemed history, and delivers to every address even if that requires a mule, float plane or dogsled. Ask Fedex to deliver that way…. they use the USPS for the last mile on a significant number of deliveries.
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It’s a vicious circle. They close post offices to cut costs, but that in turn will cut profits because people will use other services to send “real” mail. There are a lot of people who either have no interest in electronic communication, or who can’t afford it.
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Cutting hours is a good first step. Saturday deliveries can be eliminated most places. The USPS should consider deputy post offices like are used for motor vehicle registration. They could be part of other businesses, e.g. grocery stores. Changing times require responses. How many pieces of mail do you send these days? I think I’m down to two pieces per year — property tax payments. I wish they would have e-filing like everything else.
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They were already doing that in some smaller towns fifteen or more years ago. I can think of two, Seaforth and Delhi.
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