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It may already be too late, but local arguments must be made to preserve postal services
TweetLocal residents and elected of- ficials have only three weeks to put together their most persuasive arguments for why keeping post offices open and maintaining post services are important to the Mahoning Valley.
That’s not much time, and as of now not much is known about a public forum that was mentioned by David Van Allen, a U.S. Postal Service spokesman. The forum is tentatively set for Dec. 28, right in the middle of the week between Christmas and New Years. That’s not exactly prime time for people to voice their concerns about the future of the Youngstown processing center, which employs 500 people in downtown Youngstown, and local post offices that continue to provide services their communities and neighborhoods find important.
But if that’s the day the forum is held, people are going to have to make the time to advocate for the postal service to take a scalpel rather than an ax to Youngstown area operations.
Certainly Youngstown’s loss of $500,000 in income tax revenue if the processing center were closed is a concern to the city, but the postal service can’t be expected to maintain unneeded facilities for purposes of municipal revenue. Facilities should be maintained because they are needed by the people who live here, and this is one time when the area’s aging population should be counted in the plus column. Quite frankly, people in Youngstown depend on their post offices and their letter carriers more than, say, people who live in San Jose, Calif.
We dare say they’ve also been more loyal to the postal service than some other populations, and that loyalty should be worth something.
Some changes inevitable
As we acknowledged just a couple of months ago, changes are going to have to be made, and the nation can survive without Saturday mail delivery. But drastic restructuring, the kind that will eliminate the jobs of tens of thousands of postal employees and drop one of the world’s best mail-delivery systems to second- or third-tier status is too high a price to pay.
While local officials — city, county, township and state — are going to have to make their voices heard, it falls to Congress to provide alternatives to the dismantling of the postal service. About 200 members of Congress, including U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Niles, are cosponsors of legislation that would re-examine some of the financial demands included in the 2006 Postal Accountability Enhancement Act, which requires the USPS to fund retiree health-care benefits 75 years in advance. But there are clearly others in Congress who see the post office, which is unique among quasi-government agencies because it is specifically mentioned in the Constitution, as just another service that would be better off privatized. Why, we wonder, didn’t Ben Franklin, the first postmaster general, think of that.
Millions of letters are obviously being replaced by email. The postal service competes with scores of private companies for package delivery. And nothing is forever. But there are certainly hints that the postal service is proceeding with plans to drastically dismantle its operation while publicly saying that nothing will happen until the Postal Regulatory Commission meets in March.
Communities that wait until March to mount a counteroffensive will surely be on the outside looking in as the doors to their post offices and service centers are locked.
Comments
First you ran an editorial against Sheriff's Departments not being allowed to advertise on thier web sites in regards to foreclosure sales - this, because it would cut into The SPINdicator's profits, even though it would save taxpayers oodles of money.
Now, an editorial against the closing of a government entity that will be defunct in a decade or so because of new technology that will also save the taxpayers oodles of money and will lessen the value of your RE in downtown Youngstown.
Maybe you ought to start a campaign to get Comrade Bob and Comrade Jacob to gain oodles of taxpayers money to move the Lemon Grove from its current location to the soon to be vacant PO building? They could put in a drive thru where Don Hanni crashed his car years ago.
So the Vindy, which has long railed against those overpaid and overprivileged public employees, has finally awakened to what will happen now that those cushy jobs are going away. The Vindy, with its endless anti-public employee and anti-government jobs attitude, is partially responsible for the Valley's loss of the Post Offices. What other losses to the area is the Vindy responsible for?
I flagged this first comment as offensive.
The loss of this P O will be detrimental, of that there is no doubt. Please follow my example of contacting elected officials of the potential harm.
When you tie yourself to industries that are either obsolete or on the way to being obsolete, you face the day of obsolescence. Preparing for the future is NOT waiting for the inevitable and then hoping you can convince the inevitable that it isn't inevitable.
So we have a system that is called "snail mail" already and the USPS solution is to make the service even slower! They should cut back delivery to a maximum of 4 days a week and start shedding employees on a massive scale. Postage rates need to be adjusted so that they reflect actual costs to transport the mail. Then, start offering retirement to the older workers that make over $50,000 per year to do this unskilled labor and hire new workers at less money. Welcome to the real world!
The current business model of our Postal Service, with its unsustainable union labor contracts and work rules (including the no layoff policy) must be replaced with a private sector mentality of cost effective service which is completely paid for by its revenues. We can no longer afford to subsidize the current bloated and inefficient system or pay for a bloated and unnecessary labor force. My choice would be to cut it loose completely and let it sink or swim without government intervention and without taxpayer money. I believe it will then find the will and the way to go on as a private, for-profit company. Why don't we find out??
The Valley made the mistake of trying to hold on to the steel industry . The Post office as most have known it is dead & we must let it go . Every weekl brings news of new industries & jobs in the Valley & we must concentrate on those & not be diverted . As for the vacated premises , we should look on them as an asset to be redeployed .
We have not needed six days of mail delivery in a long time. This is suppose to now be a self sustaining business so they need to go to 5 days a week no overtime. Every time you raise the price more people goto to email and Internet bill paying. When run by the government it was fine to lose as much money as needed that is normal for the goverment. Remember when they would do time studies and all the sudden mailman would walk slow and not on anyone's grass that day!