INGOMAR, Mont. — The top U.S. Postal Service official on Thursday took his case for rural post-office closures straight to the people it will hurt most, telling residents in Montana’s capital and in one of its smallest towns that up to 3,600 small post offices around the country need to be shuttered as part of cost-cutting moves.
Rural residents who traveled to Helena to meet Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe answered right back, saying cuts should be made elsewhere because their post offices provide a much-needed lifeline.
One woman from the southwestern Montana town of Basin told Donahoe she has no Internet access and relies on the mail. But like many other rural residents, she does not receive mail delivery.
DeDe Rhodes said if her post office closes, the next one is more than 10 miles away, making her regular trip to pick up mail much more costly.
“I need you to really consider what we are saying. People need their rural post offices,” Rhodes told Donahoe. “Let’s look at the urban areas. Maybe they don’t need as many post offices because they get their mail delivered right to their door or at least to the curb.”
In Montana alone, about 80 small post offices are slated for closure. In Colorado, 63 of 390 post offices are targeted. Processing facilities in Alamosa, Colorado Springs, Durango and Salida might also be shuttered.
The agency needs to reorganize, in part, because of a 60 percent decline in the number of people paying bills through the mail and the cost of paying into its employee-retirement benefits, Donahoe told the gathering in Helena, which is facing the loss of its mail processing center.
Last year, postal losses totaled $5.1 billion, and those losses are projected to grow.
The trip comes as the Senate prepares as early as next week to take up legislation that would slow, if not stop, the Postal Service’s plans to close roughly half of the nation’s 460 mail-processing centers beginning this year. The move would slow first-class mail delivery and, for the first time in 40 years, eliminate the chance for stamped letters to arrive the next day.
