From the April-June 2011 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine: "The Postal Service’s assault on the nation’s mail processing network shows no signs of stopping — and APWU locals have responded by engaging elected officials, community leaders, and members of the public in the fight to save our service. "Nearly 100 members of the Flint, Michigan Area local and … Read More
And the closings go on and on
The Postal Service has been announcing post office closings for many months now. Each day sees newspaper accounts of more and more. Our news feed gets about five closing news items every day, and they all tell the same story—the shock of residents when they hear the news that their post office is closing, the urgent call for town meetings, … Read More
Rhinecliff protests the post office closings on YNN TV
RHINECLIFF, N.Y. — The United States Postal Service is cutting back in many ways, including closing some of its post offices. Recently, there had been some concern the Rhinecliff Post Office would be closing. Fortunately for local residents, the postal service says it's not closing. Community groups are using this potential scare as a way to bring awareness to the … Read More
How towns get broken
No surprise that with email and facebook and twitter and UPS and FedEx, the amount of mail delivered by the post office has gone down in recent years, from 213 billion pieces in 2006 to 170 billion in 2010. That means declining revenues and cost-cutting measures like maybe no mail delivery on Saturday. It also means closing something like 2,000 … Read More
“Rightsizing” the post office
In the current issue of Postal News, Dean Granholm, vice president of Delivery and Post Office Operations, says that new postal regulations, published recently in the Federal Register, expand the criteria for which a Post Office, station or branch may be closed or consolidated. Granholm says customers already are choosing — and desire — alternatives to visiting a local Post … Read More
The Postal Service wants to make it easier to close post offices
The Postal Service has filed formal notice through the Federal Register of a proposed change to the Discontinuance (closing) process for Post Offices (39 Code of Federal Regulations). If approved, this change would allow the Postal Service to make the Rhinecliff Post Office a "retail branch" of the Rhinebeck Post Office, which would make it much easier to close the … Read More
Senate bill could close small post offices
There's a bill coming up in the Senate that would make it easier to close small rural post offices like Rhinecliff's. Bill S3831 would eliminate the restriction against closing a post office for solely economic reasons. That means the Postal Service could set up something like a "closing panel" that would have the power to close any post office it … Read More
What you can do
The plans to close small rural post offices are being done in the name of cutting budgets for fiscal responsibility, but this doesn't really make sound financial sense, and it would be a huge blow to Rhineclifff. We hope you'll join us in opposing these plans. The community can make a difference. Here's what you can do: First, please … Read More
New Deal Post Offices for Sale
During the New Deal, the federal government built over 1,100 post offices, and many of them are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. According to the National Register website, during the decade of the New Deal the government built three times the number of post offices it had built in the previous 50 years. Many of these … Read More
