Rural Post Offices Will Not Be Closed

I called it correctly in my “What A Life”  blog posted April 25 about the planned closure of thousands of small and rural post offices. (Go to my blog archive on this site to read the April 25 post.) Perhaps the policymakers in Washington heard your voice—and mine as well.

The Associated Press reported today (May 9) that the U.S. Postal Service now intends to keep many rural post offices open, but with shorter operating hours. This revised plan will save the government an estimated one-half billion dollars annually and still provide postal services to rural Americans.  

And as I wrote in my April 25 blog on this subject, I also stated that the revised plan would be a compromise between maintaining the status quo of doing virtually nothing and shutting down as many as 3,600 small and rural post offices as previously outlined, which motivated me to produce the April 25 blog. It’s not the perfect plan, but a far better solution than what was earlier proposed. Thank you policymakers.

The next step, according to the AP report, is for postal officials to get community input during the summer months and regulatory approval for this recently modified operations plan. Part of the proposal is to reduce open business hours at up to 13,000 stations nationwide as part of a broader plan to reduce agency operational costs. In any event, the people are being heard and a slice of America's cultural fabric is being preserved.