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Post Office Changes Coming

 

You have to think level-headed old Ben Franklin, first Postmaster General of these United States, would approve of a bill introduced on July 23, 2014, by Rep. Cedric Richmond (D – New Orleans) as an antidote to the U.S. Postal Service’s severe monetary hemophilia, which is somewhere around $40 billion in the red.

Richmond’s bill – The Providing Opportunities for Savings, Transactions and Lending Act, or POSTAL Act – would allow the postal service to conduct financial transactions, such as issuing debit cards and small loans, and offering a savings program. Richmond says the USPS would benefit, but even better, so would his constituency in New Orleans, which is underserved by respectable financial institutions, and so would underserved urban and rural communities across the country.

In a 2011 survey, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation determined that 8.2 percent of U.S. households are unbanked, representing 10 million households, and one in five households (or 20 million households) are underbanked in the U.S.

USPS has also asked Congress to eliminate Saturday as a delivery day (except for emergency deliveries of medication and such), which it says would be an annual savings of $2 billion, but have failed to get any action on the proposal.

But as those proposals to bring the U.S. Postal Service into the black languish in Congress, USPS must find ways to economize.

First-class mail, the USPS’s bread and butter, is down 50 percent. Bill Galbraith, manager of postal operations for northeastern Wisconsin, said just three years ago, only 10 percent of Americans paid their bills online.

“Now it’s 50 percent,” Galbraith said on Aug. 5 at a public meeting in Ephraim to announce coming changes for that village post office.

“We need to change some things,” he said. “Most small post offices do not pay for themselves, not even close.”

A customer survey was sent to 360 Ephraim residents, providing them with several options to choose from for the future of the Ephraim Post Office. Those options were realignment of hours; home delivery; creation of a Village Post Office (Galbraith explained that the Village Post Office is a local business that agrees to sell stamps and flat-rate priority packaging materials); or have residents collect their mail from a nearby post office such as Sister Bay or Fish Creek.

Of those 360 surveys sent out, 229 people responded, and 210 of them, or 92 percent, opted for a realignment of hours. Only two chose the home delivery option, one chose the Village Post Office option and 16, or seven percent, chose no option.

“It’s you that decided what you want,” Galbraith told the 65 people in attendance at the meeting in Ephraim’s Village Hall.

The realignment of hours at the Ephraim Post Office will likely be 8 am to noon and 12:30 to 2:30 pm on weekdays, and 9 to 10 am on Saturdays.

One of the attendees pointed out that these match current hours, but Galbraith explained that Postmaster Pam Abts would be limited to 6 ½-hour days, which means less time for her to distribute mail to the post office boxes during non-window hours.

With reduced hours, Galbraith said USPS would install lockers in the Ephraim Post Office to hold larger packages so customers can pick them up at their convenience.

Galbraith was unable to tell the audience exactly when the changes will happen, but said it will likely be before the end of the year.

Galbraith conducted a similar meeting on Washington Island on Aug. 6 and said that post office will undergo the same changes as Ephraim.