Rural area post offices in danger of closure

From KOB-TV and the Clovis News Journal - Due to financial struggles, the U.S. Postal Service has produced a list of about 3,700 post offices it will study for closure nationwide. This week, the US Postal Service announced 54 offices in New Mexico will be evaluated in a cost-cutting study. USPS spokesman Peter Hass said the 180-day process of considering closure would start once announcements were sent to customers of each post office. He didn’t know when that would be. Each post office is to be studied individually, and the process includes a 60-day public comment period. Hass said no post offices would close before December. The three major criteria USPS considered when choosing which locations to study for closure were the number of retail transactions per day, amount of revenue and proximity of the next-nearest post office, Hass said. If a post office is closed, he said, the community could get a “village post office.” In that arrangement, the Postal Service would contract with a small business or governmental body to offer its services. Hass said 35 percent of USPS revenue already comes from services received outside a regular post office — online or in a private store, for example. “Over the past four years, we’ve seen a 20 percent decline in mail volume,” Hass continued. The economic downturn has led to less advertising mail, and people have been communicating, paying bills and so forth electronically instead of sending first-class mail, he said. Hass said this situation means USPS has to be more efficient. Read more

Rural area post offices in danger of closure