& Albany County Post - The Altamont Enterprise

2 The Altamont Enterprise – Thursday, May 17, 2012EditorialWithout flexibility, the eagle cannot flyThe outcry could be heard locally and from coast to coast. Rural voicesraised objections, loud and clear, to plans by the United States PostalService to close offices as the service struggled to remain solvent.Last week, the USPS made a welcome announcement: Rather than closingoffices outright, hours will be reduced at many rural post offices. That’s goodnews for Guilderland Center and Clarksville, which were slated for closure,but other area post offices will now see reduced hours as well. We’re runninga list this week of the proposed changes for all of our local offices.In giving background for its new plan last Wednesday, the postal servicestated that its announcement last July — nearly 3,700 post offices wouldbe studied for possible closure — was one strategy in the wake of continueddecline in the volume of mail, ongoing financial challenges, and changingcustomer behavior. The postal service claimed that, as population shiftedto more urban and suburban settings, an outdated network of retail officesremained where few people live, work, or shop.In our area, at least, this is not true. The post offices remained at theheart of their communities.Last May, we wrote of the uprising in Guilderland Center as residentswho referred to the post office as the hub of their small community, expresseddismay at having to drive four miles to Altamont to get and sendmail. “Taking away the post office is taking away our identity,” said AllenJager, pastor of the Helderberg Reformed Church in Guilderland Center.The acting postmaster said that the elderly were kept track of throughthe post office; if someone doesn’t show up for mail for a day or two, thatperson is checked on.In New Scotland’s rural hamlet of Clarksville, residents expressed similarconcerns at having to drive to the post office in Feura Bush five miles away.Many with small businesses said they relied on having the post office inthe hamlet.One of them, lawyer Peter Henner, filed a petition last September on behalfof himself and more than 30 people and six businesses, arguing that thepostal service did not consider the actual fiscal impact of the proposed closing.The following month, the Albany County Sheriff’s Office filed a noticeof intervention to oppose the closure, since it plans to move to the vacantelementary school in Clarksville and said it would need a functioning postoffice for certified letters, packages, and for mailing bulky materials.The commission concluded that the postal service had not “adequatelyconsidered the effect of the post office closing on the community.”Clarksville was not alone in its objections. The commission got 100 appealsfor post office closures in 2011 and 100 more in the first quarter ofthe 2012 fiscal year, according to its annual report to Congress. In 2010, ithad gotten only six appeals.Last summer, the postal service had changed its process forevaluating office closures to a “top-down review,” the Albanydistrict’s spokeswoman, Margaret Pepe, told us at the time.“It was done nationally,” she said of the change, explaining,“with everything going on in the Post Office…we know we’regoing to run out of money.”Customer retail visits, according to the postal service, havedropped by 27 percent from 2005 to 2011.This is because 61percent of customers use traditional post offices while 39percent used expanded access — accessing services online,from other providers or kiosks, or by fax or phone. The postalservice says that 88 percent of rural post offices are losingmoney.If cutting back hours will allow the small offices to remainopen, we’re for the change.The postal service’s survey of rural customers showed, when they wereoffered four choices, the majority, 54 percent, prefer maintaining current officeswhile modifying window hours. Twenty percent preferred establishing avillage post office; 15 percent favored merging with a nearby post office; and11 percent chose using rural carriers to deliver to roadside mailboxes.The rural post offices will stay open, the postal service has promised, unlessa community has a strong alternative preference. The new approach isslated to be completed by September 2014.This is making the best of a bad situation. Unlike other services of federalgovernment, the postal service has to pay for itself. It is a governmentbusinesshybrid, confined by legislation in the way its private-sector competitorsare not.Although its roots go back to 1775, set up in Philadelphia by BenjaminFranklin, the Post Office Department was created as part of the UnitedStates Cabinet in 1792. But in 1971, under the Postal Reorganization Act,the U.S. Postal Service was set up as an independent establishment of theexecutive branch, making it self-sufficient, funded almost entirely by postagerather than taxpayer dollars. It is obligated to serve all Americans atuniform price and quality, regardless of geography.At the same time that electronic mail has undercut the use of traditionalpostal services, the USPS has been stymied from progressing in the digitalage by the government itself. According to a Government AccountabilityOffice report that is nearly a dozen years old, from September 2000, thepostal service identified an electronic mailbox, a concept then in the earlydevelopment stage, that could link electronic and physical addresses, asan infrastructure initiative. The service also introduced an eBillPay initiative,an electronic bill payment service, in April 2000. The next month,it introduced the PosteCS initiative, an Internet-based global documentdelivery system.Congress denied the postal service’s request to start these electronic initiatives,saying it should refrain from direct competition with private firms.Private companies, as we’ve noted before, have taken on similar projectsand prospered.Where does that leave the American people?Meanwhile, unlike other federal agencies, the postal service is requiredto prefund retiree health benefits, totaling about $5.5 billion; Congress hasnot granted postal service requests to alter the payment schedule.In the long run, the postal service needs more flexibility if it is to surviveand prosper. It is a service that not only provides a needed center to ruralcommunities but binds a country together.Congress denied the postal service’s requestto start these electronic initiatives,saying it should refrain from direct competition with private firms.