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Dell Post Office being studied for closure
To the editor:
I am usually pretty good at keeping up with what is going with the Postal Service. Hey, I had 23 years invested in it. But on Tuesday, June 21, at 10:58 in the morning, I got a phone call from another retired postmaster, Mrs. Brownlee, that shocked me.
She retired several years ago from the Dell office. She informed me that Dell was up for closure and that there would be a town hall meeting that very night with a representative from the Arkansas District there to discuss, as in the letter that all residents of Dell had received about a week ago, and asked me to attend. I was floored, to say the least. We all know what trying financial circumstances the Postal Service is in these days. It is projected to be over $2 billion in the red, etc.
However, unless you are a member of the Postal family, one does not worry about it. You think that like the car makers and the bankers, Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, our government will bail them out. Nope, sorry, no such luck.
The backstory
The Postal Service, as declared by Congress in 1970, is a separate entity of the government. They were set up to be self-sufficient, not to make a whole lot of money, and not to bleed red. The Postal Service receives NO, that is right, no tax money from you or the government. For the past 30-plus years, it has been doing pretty good holding its own.
So what has happened? The Internet, Facebook, Twitter, etc. People are no longer paying bills by mail; they are doing it over the Internet or bank drafts. They are not writing letters; there is Facebook and Twitter, etc., that they can keep in touch on. Newspapers and magazines are also dying out and not being mailed as they were in years past. All that has had a huge impact on the Postal Service, and it has been slow in keeping up; thus now they are scrambling to downsize and save money.
Because of the way Congress set up the Postal Service in 1970, they cannot just lay people off, nor can they cut back the hours or days of delivery without going through a long string of red tape. That process was started back in 2008, and is still trying to snake its ugly head through the halls of Congress.
Another problem for the Postal Service -- and this is the real biggie -- when Congress set up the Postal Service in 1970, it also said that you must prefund health care for all present and future retirees. Think about having a workforce of some 700,000 employees and having to prefund their future health care. No other company in the United States has to do that. If they did, we would not be in the health care crisis we are in today.
So over the years, the Postal Service has contributed an excess of more than $70 billion to that fund. That is enough money to fund health care for every man, woman and child in the United States. The Postal Service went to Congress last year to get relief from the $8 billion they must contribute every year. Congress will not give them this relief, even though it is breaking the back of the Postal Service. The Postal Service has a request before Congress to not deliver mail on Saturdays. This may pass eventually because it would save millions.
Losing post office = losing identity
That brings us up to today. Now the Postal Service is scrambling to save every penny they can, and that is where the Dell Post Office and many others like her will be affected. Tuesday, Chuck Hamilton, the postmaster of West Memphis, but on detail to the human resources department in Little Rock, came to Dell to tell the town folks that they, as he said, "may" lose their Post Office.
Unless you have been in a town that loses its post office, you cannot imagine what that will do to you. You basically lose your identity. Any of you that have had your identity stolen will know what that can do to you. It is almost the same with a community that loses a post office.
Now that is where us retired postmasters come in. We make sure that the Postal Service is following the letter of the law, as written by Congress as in Title 39 of the U.S. Code. That is why I was at that meeting. The Code basically says that every town, community, be they urban or rural, is entitled to a post office and that no office shall be closed because it is simply not making money. That is a very simple paraphrase.
Well, 99 percent of the rural offices always operate in the red. Remember, Congress in the Code written in 1970 said they can NOT close an office because of that. So what the Postal Service is doing now is looking at these offices, be they large or small, and they are picking the ones that do not have a sitting postmaster and telling them that they are being studied for closure.
Dell's last postmaster retired in December 2010. Normally, upon a postmaster's retirement or promotion, the Postal Service will put that office up for bid within 60 to 90 days, and any postal employee can bid for the job. That was, and is, a good system; it gives everyone a chance for promotion. Before 1970, all postmaster positions were filled by Congressional appointment.
So what happened to Dell? Bad timing. Because the previous postmaster retired last year and there was a hiring freeze on -- remember I said earlier about downsizing -- the powers to be in Little Rock decided not to post the Dell office because it has never made enough money to pay salary, bills and rent. That is how they, the Postal Service, is trying to get around the law. They are not looking at closing offices just because they are not making money. (Oh, they would love to, but they know even that would only save 7/10 of 1 percent.) But now that there is no postmaster AND it is losing money, they think they are justified.
The retired postmasters and the National Association of Postmasters of the United States and The League are fighting for all small, rural post offices. The post office is your identity, in most cases, your only contact with the government. You go there for your mail, passports, money orders, stamps and just to chat with your neighbor. The post office is tour community bulletin board, you find out what is happening in the community. If the government takes that away, what have we got left?
We are fighting for Dell, and we hope we will prevail. You can help -- make phone calls, send emails and yes, even letters to your local Congress/Senate person and tell them that only they can save rural America by not closing rural post offices. And ask them to help out one of the last great pieces of history that helped build this great country, the United States Postal Service, by passing a bill to give them relief from that prefunding of health care burden.
This is not only a plea for the city and fine folks of Dell. The future of YOUR local post office, as well as you and your children's future, may depend on it.