Posted on 06/27/2009 6:10:02 PM PDT by Daffynition
A rallying cry can be heard across the country, from the swanky streets of New York's SoHo to the tiny town of Randolph, Kan.: "Save our post office!"
As the United States Postal Service, weighed down by a crippling multibillion-dollar deficit, shrinks its operations, post offices across the country are on the chopping block. Each year, hundreds of postal operations shutter, but this coming fall could be the single biggest consolidation in Postal Service history.
Over the next three months, more than 3,200 post offices and retail outlets -- out of 34,000 -- will be reviewed for possible closure or consolidation.
Downsizing is a business imperative, says Linda Welch, acting vice president of delivery and post office operations at the Postal Service. "Revenues have declined, and mail volume continues to decline," she says.
Not only have e-mail and electronic bill paying made for a skinnier mail stream, but the recession has caused a sharp pullback in advertising mail that has hurt the Postal Service even more.
In March, Postmaster General John Potter asked Congress for the right to reduce the mail week from six days to five, for a savings of $3.5 billion. Shutting down post offices will have similar cost-saving effects. And most Americans say they're OK with the cutbacks, as long as they don't have to pay more to send mail. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that more Americans would rather the Postal Service curtail services than seek a bailout or raise stamp prices.
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(Excerpt) Read more at articles.moneycentral.msn.com ...
And they want to run our health care????????
How about that stimulus?
Sounds like this “hope and change” thing is starting to get serious. The unions aren’t going to like this.
“A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that more Americans would rather the Postal Service curtail services than seek a bailout or raise stamp prices.”
I use the post office daily. I ship books that I sell on-line from home. It would be a total PITA to me if my little PO would close. It serves about 6,000 souls, but I can see them cutting back on our services.
If it keeps my postal clerks employed (most work there part-time, are Vets and farm the rest of the time), I can live with less mail delivery days.
But can my customers? *SHRUG*
Not mine thank God. I’ve got one of those small town post offices that actually work.
I suspect they'll do all three.
I see nothing wrong with the USPS closing down underused post offices and downsizing to respond to shrinking demand.
Up in southern Vermont our PO is the front living room of an house. The lady that is the postmaster is a laugh riot. I hope it never closes!
They should ( never will ) get rid of the union thugs who really run the show.
Save lots of money too.
Take its monopoly away and the Post Office will either “get it” or go broke. I don’t think my local post office is in any great danger of closing any time soon, but there are aspects of their services which a retarded teenager on a bicycle could improve upon(if he wasn’t in a union).
There has been a suggestion to close the post offices across the country for one day and allow the postal workers to take the census.
I think that would be an excellent idea and eliminates the sleaze from ACORN getting our personal information.
Way back when Bill Bolger was Postmaster General I worked with Shirley McDonald to develop a plan for eliminating useless, redundant, or "who did what" post offices.
We came up with a plan to ELIMINATE over 21,000 post offices ~ virtually allwere what were then called 2nd, 3rd and 4th Class post offices. The service to customers would be provided through rural delivery, and that whole service, itself, would be reorganized and subjected to modern route evaluation techniques. This would reduce the number of headout office significantly while, much to our surprise, adancing delivery of mail to the recipients served in those areas by ONE AND ONE-HALF DAYS.
Our plan did not affect any city delivery post offices, or stations or branches.
Full implementation of the plan would have cut total USPS expenses by 15% or more.
PMG Potter's plan is far more modest. He will catch just as much hell for that one as we did for our plan. Postmasters and Rural Letter Carriers are organized and politically toxic. Their organizations usually control more than half the House Post Office Committee and a near controlling interest on the relevant equivalent Senate committee.
I would encourage Potter to "grow a pair" and take it to the max while he has a chance. It won't cost him any more psychological stress to do that than to do this "half measure" his guys have come up with.
My plan is still on file there ~ no excuse for not looking at it.
The USPS can start to show it's sincerity at cutting costs by getting rid of the top-heavy management it continues on its payroll at far too many large post offices within this nation.
We don’t even have a party store or gas station in town so our PO is kind of the public hangout for all the old folks.
And if he didnt have Congress breathing down his neck.
Now, let's be smart about this. Close the local Post Offices on MONDAY...not Saturday. Stop the stupid Saturday delivery. I always laugh as I watch them deliver to all the businesses on Saturday....who won't open it until Monday.
Ours in kinda like that but we have a real general store ... and that is the morning hang-out.
I have a privatization plan on file ~ several hundred pages long. First thing I would do is arrange a leveraged buyout of UPS. Second thing would be to move their management into Postal Headquarters. Might be up to a thousand folks already there we'd keep.
BTW, UPS was founded as a nationwide parcel delivery operation by FORMER Post Office Department headquarters employees.
After an extensive and thorough investigation of who and what was available, I determined a long time ago that the private sector is NOT INTERESTED.
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