USPS to hold public meetings at each of the 13,000 rural post offices slated for a reduction in hours

The U.S. Postal Service will hold a public meeting at each of the 13,000 rural post offices where it plans to reduce operating hours. The idea is that for its POStPlan to work, USPS needs to get its customers on board, or at least have them feel that they've had a voice in the matter. The service has already scheduled 1,518 meetings for the two-week period Oct. 8 through Oct. 19. At a rate of 900 meetings a week, it is expected to take six weeks for the process to be completed. An initial list of the meeting times and places is here. (Be sure to open the Cards 1 window for the full alphabetical list.)

According to the Save The Post Office blog, half the meetings are scheduled for 4 p.m. or later and the other half are planned for mid-day. Those individuals interested in having their say about the changes planned in their area will be able to fill out a survey in lieu of on-site participation. (Read more) Those interested in organizing to save rural post offices can look for help here.

Tough vote for rural members? House won't vote on postal reform before November elections

An overhaul of the U.S. Postal Service will not even be discussed in the U.S. House before the November elections, Bernie Becker of The Hill reports. After the Senate passed a bill, House Republicans suggested they would start moving their own version during the summer. They now say one reason for the delay is that it could be a tough vote for members from rural areas, where the majority of suggested post office closings and changes would happen, Bcker reports.

Lawmakers working on postal issues are trying to "lay the groundwork to ensure at least something gets done on the issue" during the post-election lame-duck session that will already be packed with "pressing fiscal issues," Becker reports. Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who introduced the postal reform bill, said he believes the Republican leadership will support bringing the bill to the House floor after the election. (Read more)

More problems found with USPS surveys and community meetings about threatened post offices

The U.S. Postal Service a few weeks ago started implementing POstPlan, its restructuring by closure or reduction of hours at hundreds of post office across the U.S., mostly in rural areas. As ordered by the Postal Regulatory Commission, USPS is scheduling public meetings about offices that have no postmaster right now, but as Steve Hutkins of Save the Post Office reported last week, community surveys were only mailed to post-office boxes and meetings were planned during work hours. Hutkins has now uncovered more issues with the plan's implementation.

The PRC told USPS that some of its survey questions were confusing and might mislead customers. Three of four options on the survey regarding the customers' preference are about closing the post office, and the PRC said customers might not understand that. The USPS didn't revise the survey, opting to explain the survey question in an accompanying letter instead. Hutkins reports that "people are not getting the fact that three of the options involve closing the post office," as reported by newspapers in Virginia, where several offices in the Tidewater region will be affected by POstPlan. Many other news reports have been paraphrasing the survey without clarifying the options, Hutkins writes.

Community preference from at least two rural offices -- in Waters, Mich., and an unnamed one in Eastern Kentucky -- has been ignored, Hutkins reports. The hours at both were reduced before POstPlan began, but they were still included in the plan list. Surveys have been sent to customers, and community meetings planned anyway. The community meeting at the Malden, Wash., office is scheduled to be  held in the post office lobby, a 629-square-foot space, Hutkins reports. In Jonesville, Tex., a lobby meeting is scheduled on Tuesday, Nov. 6 at noon -- the middle of Election Day. (Read more)

Postal Service seeks community input, often limited, about post offices without postmasters

Post office in Windsor, Mass.

The U.S. Postal Service intends to quickly implement its restructuring scheme, POstPlan, and is starting by reviewing any post office without a postmaster. There are several thousand post offices in this category, most of them in rural places. The agency is asking for community input, but Steve Hutkins of Save the Post Office says some residents are being left out.

There are 13,000 post offices listed for review under POstPlan, and about 8,000 of those are without a postmaster and will be reviewed "very soon," Hutkins reports. Many patrons of post offices on the list have received a letter describing the plan, with a survey of their preferences about what should happen to their post office.

Though the Postal Regulatory Commission's formal opinion on the plan says all customers of a post office that is being reviewed will receive a survey, in some places only post-office box holders are receiving it, and those on home delivery are not, Hutkins reports. Community meetings with postal officials will be scheduled, but Hutkins reports some meetings are being scheduled during work hours, preventing many people from attending.

Hutkins describes the process: "The plan involves scheduling the community meeting and then sending out the surveys about six weeks before the meeting. Customers are asked to return the survey within two weeks, which will give the Postal Service about a month to tabulate the results. At the meeting, the results of the survey will be shared and discussed, and those customers who haven’t filled out a survey can do so at the meeting. One week later, the Postal Service will announce its decision about the future of the post office. If the decision is to reduce the hours rather than discontinue the office, the new hours of operation will be posted, and they’ll take effect 30 days later." The surveys are being sent out now, the meetings will begin in October, and the reduced hours will take effect starting in November. (Read more)

Regulator's OK means full speed ahead on USPS plan to cut hours of post offices, mostly rural

The U.S. Postal Service’s regulatory overseer has endorsed the agency’s plan to shorten hours at thousands of mostly rural post offices. USPS offered the plan to reduce hours at roughly 13,000 offices as it dropped one to shutter thousands of them. Here's a USA Today map of the offices that would be affected; for an interactive version, click here.

Postal Regulatory Commission Chair Ruth Goldway said she believed the proposal would ensure sufficient postal access nationwide. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has said the move would save the service roughly $500 million a year, through both the shorter hours and reduced benefits costs. An agency spokeswoman told The Hill that USPS was pleased with the regulator’s decision and would move full speed ahead on implementing the service changes. (Read more) The reduced hours appear likely to be in place before the end of the year. 

Postal discount to direct mailer OKd; newspapers going to court, say watchdog role threatened

UPDATE, Sept. 2: For a PDF of frequently asked questions about the deal, with answers from NNA, click here.

The Postal Regulatory Commission has voted 4 to 1 to support to a U.S. Postal Service plan to give a discount to a prominent direct mailer, a move that struggling newspapers say will probably reduce an important income stream for them. For background, click here.

Under the service's three-year deal with Valassis, the company will get a discount on additional pieces sent. Ruth Goldway, the commission’s chairwoman, acknowledged that newspapers were upset with the proposed deal, but said that the discount given to Valassis would not give the company an unfair advantage. “The Commission understands that both newspapers and the Postal Service are experiencing declining revenues as new technologies based on the Internet grow in popularity," she said. "Today’s decision affirms that fair competition between these two important institutions is consistent with the law.”

The Newspaper Association of America, representing most dailies, said it was “stunned” by the decision and would take it to court. (Read more)  National Newspaper Association President Reed Anfinson, publisher of the Swift County Monitor-News in Benson, Minn., said the association of weeklies and small dailies was "deeply disappointed" in the commission’s analysis.

"The commission begins with the presumption that having a federal enterprise competing head-on with the newspaper industry is a good thing, but it does not explain how any business can be on a level playing field when competing with its own government," Anfinson said. "The mailing contract with Valassis is an unfair deal in which the principal result is to drive down the advertiser’s prices and not necessarily to bring any new mail volume to the Postal Service. What the commission does not explain is why this goal is in the best interest of either newspapers or the Postal Service. Nor does it take seriously the arguments raised by many that this deal will force more newspapers out of the mail and create a net loss for the Postal Service after the deal kicks in."

Anfinson took issue with the commission's view, as he described it, that there is no "problem with the Postal Service’s draining revenues from news-gathering organizations. Somehow it seems to believe the centuries-old mailing category for periodicals created by Congress is able to equal out the harm from contracts like this one. . . . We know that in thousands of communities around this nation that newspapers remain the most vigorous watchdog of government as well as the primary source of community news."

Postal Service deal with mass mailer could cut into newspapers' already bleeding revenue

The U.S. Postal Service is proposing a rate cut for one of the country's largest direct marketing companies, which could have a direct impact on the weekend advertising bundles in newspapers, the industry's biggest source of revenue. The USPS says it would make $15 million over three years by cutting what it charges Valassis Communications, because the company has promised to send even more under the proposal, Ryan Nakashima of The Associated Press reports.

The deficit-laden USPS would give Valassis a discount of up to 34 percent, and the company has agreed to pay a penalty if it doesn't boost its number of mailings. Valassis reaches 100 million homes every week and would be able to cut prices for advertisers, including Home Depot, Lowe's and JC Penney, which could pull business from Sunday newspaper inserts and into its midweek bundles, known as RedPlum.

The move could take $1 billion of annual revenue from the newspaper industry, which gets about $24 billion a year from ads, much in weekend inserts and advertising fliers sent weekly to non-subscribers. That's down from $49 billion in 2005, and "The outlook isn't promising for newspapers," Nakashima writes. "The commission has never in its 42-year history denied an application for a so-called 'negotiated service agreement' related to its mail delivery monopoly," according to a Postal Regulatory Commission spokeswoman. "Critics say the discounts don't always produce the intended boost in mail volume and profits. . . . The eight negotiated service agreements in effect from 2007 to 2011 have lost money instead of generating new income."

PRC Chair Ruth Goldway said the commission is "reviewing the proposal with a critical eye," because the USPS hasn't been "very good at predicting the negative consequences of its actions," Nakashima reports. But the newspaper industry is worried about another quote from Goldway: "Even if we only make $15 million, but we increase the amount of volume in the mail and we get various businesses to think positively about using the mail in the future, then this is something good to do." (Read more) If newspapers lose the case, they could appeal to the courts and Congress.

As USPS's cutbacks proceed, 4,100 postmasters, mostly rural, retire -- and get written up

This week the U.S. Postal Service said that, thanks to a $20,000 incentive, nearly 3,800 postmasters had taken early retirement as of July 31, and about 300 will be retiring by the end of September, bringing the total to 4,100. Save The Post Office has compiled dozens of news articles from small newspapers that chronicled the lives and importance of those people on the communities they served. The stories show just how much the postmaster is valued in a small town and how sorry people are to bid farewell. "They provide a glimpse, into a world that’s being stamped out by POStPlan," Save the Post Office says, providing a sweet slide show of some of the departing postmasters and links (including a few that don't work) to the stories.

Here's our favorite lede of the stories we were able to read, by John Christensen of the Chronicle-Express in Penn Yan, N.Y.: "Despite the widely held belief by his coworkers that he took his oath of office from Benjamin Franklin himself, and that he would never retire, Penn Yan Postmaster Leigh MacKerchar is about to do just that after a mere 30 years braving the rain hail and sleet, and the heat of the day and dark of night. Known as one of the friendliest faces in public service, he will be sincerely missed by all who have benefited from his commitment to that service and the satisfaction of his postal customers." (Read more) Most of the stories are from newspapers, but here is one from KOLN-TV in Lincoln, Neb., which covered a musical sendoff by the Riverdale Rounders, above, for Riverdale postmaster John Schafer.

In a tribute to them all, Save The Post Office writes, "Nearly 6,000 POStPlan post offices are losing their postmasters — 1,800 to retirement and 3,900 to transfers. These post offices will not be welcoming a new full-time postmaster ever again. Instead, a postmaster relief or a clerk will be filling in until the Postal Service conducts a survey and holds a community meeting and decides the fate of the post office. Those that aren't closed will have their hours reduced, and the postmaster position will be filled by a part-time worker. All the retirements and transfers have to be causing confusion and consternation for customers and postal workers. The average length of service for the 50 retiring postmasters in those news articles was 32 years. Those 4,100 retirements thus represent over 130,000 years of experience. That’s a lot of institutional knowledge to disappear overnight." (Read more)

Northern and Central Appalachia, Corn Belt localities would bear brunt of shorter post-office hours

The folks at USA Today have come up with vivid illustrations of the geographic impact of the reduced hours that the Postal Service is imposing on more than 13,000 rural post offices, as an alternative to its initial plan to close 3,700 of them. Meghan Hoyer reports that many of the communities are "places where businesses depend on the mail and residents use mail delivery for everything from prescriptions to correspondence" because they lack broadband Internet and reliable cell-phone service.

The interactive maps with Hoyer's story show offices that the USPS proposes to open two, four and six hours a day. Here's the composite map (click here for interactive version):

"The cuts would strike a line through Appalachia," Hoyer notes. "The states with counties that have the highest concentration of affected offices are on the Appalachian Trail: Maine, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont and West Virginia. In Alaska and some Plains states — Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas — more than 60 percent of offices are on the block for reductions as counter service drops to six, four or two hours a day. Most urban areas are not slated to be affected." (Read more)

Lists of post offices being 'optimized' and those with expiring leases bear watching

Worried about the future of your post office? The Save The Post Office blog is doing some recon for you. It reports that you need to be concerned your post office is closing if the U.S. Postal Service is moving carriers to another facility — that’s called Delivery Unit Optimization (DUO) — or if its lease will expire in the next year. If both are happening, the blog suggests, you don't hold your breath for great postal service in the future. About 58 post offices are being DUOed this summer and also have leases expiring in the next 12 months, Save the Post Office reports. The list is here.

The blog also notes "that 38 of the 58 post offices being DUOed and with a lease expiring soon are also on the POStPlan list. It’s very likely that in many of these cases, the Postal Service is moving the carriers not in preparation for closing the post office, but because under POStPlan there won’t be a full-time postmaster to supervise the carriers."

The USPS website explains, “Delivery Unit Optimization involves relocating letter carriers out of local post offices, stations and branches and consolidating them into centralized delivery offices that will continue to be served by the same processing and distribution center. The existing retail operation will require less space and the office could then be downsized to a smaller space nearby."

Save The Post Office suggests that those interested should keep an eye on the list of those being DUOed with a lease expiring soon, and to see how many of them "end up being suspended, closed, or relocated. It will be a good indication of whether the Postal Service really plans to preserve post offices under POStPlan, or if it's just a distraction while the Postal Service continues to close them." (Read more)

Postal Service report says it could make post offices into vital business hubs

A new report by the USPS Office of Inspector General titled “21st Century Post Office: Non-Postal Products and Services” presents an excellent summary of some of the things that the Postal Service could do to bring in new revenue and revitalize brick-and-mortar post offices. And the Save the Post Office blog, champion of salvaging every rural postal outpost, is thrilled. (Australian post office photo from Save the Post Office)

"The OIG looked at foreign postal systems, took suggestions from postmasters, and reviewed its own previously published reports on the subject. The new OIG report is packed with interesting possibilities," the blog reads: "Here’s a list of just some of them, in no particular order (and elaborated slightly): Public internet access services (like wi-fi and computer kiosks); government services on behalf of federal agencies; government services on behalf of state and local agencies, like paying traffic fines, acquiring fishing and hunting licenses; banking services, such as savings accounts, check cashing, foreign money orders, electronic money transfers, and prepaid cards; other financial services, like retirement planning and insurance; e-bill paying for utility, medical and credit card; job services; selling packing materials and offer packing services; cell phone products and services; fax and photocopy services; notary services; greeting cards, toys, calendars and stationary; ATMs.

"The OIG also mentions having the Postal Service get into leasing and warehouse services. Rather than "shedding excess capacity," as the Postal Service puts it, why not do something with the space? Many of the post offices being closed and sold are right in the middle of busy downtowns. The space in the back where the carriers used to work (they've been relocated to an annex on the outskirts) could be rented out to all sorts of retail businesses, offices for professionals, and government and social services agencies. Some could be turned into wi-fi equipped cafes, the way bookstores have done — and the way the post offices do it in Uganda!"

So, what, pray tell, is holding things back? "Congress and private corporations, of course," it answers.  "For decades, the private sector has lobbied Congress, complained to the PRC, and done everything it could to make sure the post office didn't cut into its profits." (Read more) You can read the entire USPS report here.

Award winner says failing to do good rural journalism tells rural people that they are 'not that important'

All that is, can or should be great about community journalism was on display July 20 as two rural newspaper journalists with very different but equally distinctive careers received the Al Smith Award for public service through community journalism.

Jennifer P. Brown, opinion editor and former editor of the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville, and Max Heath, retired vice president and executive editor of Landmark Community Newspapers Inc. received the award from the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.

The award is named for the rural newspaper publisher who is a national SPJ Fellow and co-founder of the Institute, based in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky. Last year Smith was the first recipient of the award, which is presented for a career of public service through community journalism in Kentucky, or anywhere by a current or former Kentuckian, with preference given to those outside metropolitan areas.

In her remarks to the awards dinner crowd at Eastern Kentucky University's Center for the Arts, Brown, left, gave a clear picture of the fortitude and high goals often required be a good community journalist.

"You have to be careful with friendships, and you have to tell the truth. And then you see the subjects of your stories in the toilet paper aisle at Kroger," she said. "Often, I learn that we don’t expect enough from people. I mean we don’t expect enough from our own journalists and from the people we cover. Setting the bar high usually works. I hate to see people at smaller papers accepting crumbs. If you don’t do good journalism at small papers —and doing good journalism includes filing open records requests and complaining when the open meetings law is violated —then you are telling people who live in rural areas that their place in life, in the world, is not that important."

Heath established the editorial principles that have earned Landmark national recognition. He told the crowd that his work on journalism ethics and freedom of information was guided by the values of SPJ.

For more from Brown and Heath, and more about the award, click here.

Postal service's POStPlan for small post offices gets a hearing, and an unexpected cross-examiner

The good folks at Save The Post Office have provided a handy recap of the history of the proposed POStPlan, the U.S. Postal Service's plan for small post offices. This refresher course is pertinent after last week's testimony by Jeffrey Day, USPS retail-operations manager, before the Postal Regulatory Commission.

Day, the only USPS witness for the plan, was there to be cross-examined about the reduction in hours at 13,000 post offices. "There wasn’t much in the way of Perry Mason moments, and judging by the questions from the commissioners and the PRC’s public representative, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of opposition to POStPlan," Save The Post Office reports. "With the two postmasters associations both on board, it appears that only the [American Postal Workers Union] is interested in challenging the plan, and its concern seems to be who’s going to be staffing the POStPlan offices."

Opposing the plan was attorney Elaine Mittleman, who has been helping to save post offices after her office in Pimmit, Va., was closed last year. She was in the hearing room to question Day. "Whatever flaws there may be in the advisory opinion process," Save the Post Office notes, "the fact that an average citizen, officially representing just herself, could join the commissioners in the questioning says a lot about the commission’s commitment to transparency and public participation." (Read more)

Amazon says it will shift 1/6 of its business from USPS if Saturday delivery ends

Rural interests and others who favor continued Saturday mail delivery gained a powerful lobbying ally Wednesday when Amazon testified against the U.S. Postal Service's plan and threatened to move a sixth of its business to other carriers if Congress goes along. The company is one of the USPS's biggest customers.

Amazon Vice President for Global Public Policy Paul Misener said the company's customers have "come to expect Saturday mail delivery," reports Eric Engleman of Puget Sound Business Journal.  "While they may be able to wait until Monday or Tuesday for a bill they don't really want; an advertisement they didn't ask for; or a magazine to which they subscribed long ago; they expect the items they purchased this week to be delivered as soon as possible," Misener said. He added that ending Saturday delivery would be especially hard for Amazon's rural customers, who "simply would not be able to receive parcels on Saturday because there are no delivery alternatives to the USPS."

Protesters to stage hunger strike to oppose postal closings and service cutbacks

Protesters will be in Washington, D.C. on Monday, June 25, to start a four-day hunger strike to bring attention to the U.S. Postal Service plan to reduce services and cut jobs, mostly in rural areas, reports Steve Hutkins of Save the Post Office. The protest will take place just days before the USPS implements changes that would end overnight delivery for about 20 percent of First Class mail.

Over 400 community groups, clergy, citizens and postal workers are endorsing the strike, and individuals can add their names to the list of endorsers. If any are from your community, that could be a local story.

Hutkins says the theme of the hunger strike is "that cuts to service will succeed only in driving business away from the Postal Service and sending it into a death spiral." Hutkins adds that alternatives to the current proposals exist to save the USPS, including repeal of the 2006 Congressional mandate that requires the USPS to pay $5.6 billion a year into its retiree health plan, which he says is the main cause of the agency's deficit (Read more)

Historic post offices up for sale or already sold; National Trust, communities want them preserved

The U.S. Postal Service has been selling off post-office buildings as a way to save money and "downsize its retail network," Steve Hutkins of Save the Post Office writes. But The National Trust for Historic Preservation is stepping in to try and save some historic offices by collectively placing the buildings on its list of the most endangered historic places. The post offices include those in Geneva, Ill., La Jolla, Calif. (left), Gulfport, Miss. and Fernandina Beach, Fla.

The Trust said on its website that city officials and preservationists "find themselves frustrated by a lack of information and guidance from the U.S. Postal Service" when they find buyers for historic offices. "Local post office buildings have traditionally played an essential role in the lives of millions of Americans. Many are architecturally distinctive, prominently located, and cherished as civic icons in communities across the country. Unless the U.S. Postal Service establishes a clear, consistent process that follows federal preservation law when considering disposal of these buildings, a significant part of the nation’s architectural heritage will be at risk."

The USPS owns about 9,000 of its 32,000 offices, Hutkins writes. The others are in leased spaces. Of those it owns, about 2,500 are either on the National Register of Historic Places or are eligible to be listed. More than 1,000 post offices were built during the New Deal, including the one in La Jolla, and are significant for the murals and sculptures they contain, which Postal Service Historian Dallen Wordekemper said are "often prized more than the buildings themselves."

Many of the New Deal post offices have already been sold as of last year, Hutkins reports. USPS partnered with the largest commercial real-estate company in the world, CB Richard Ellis, to manage sales. About 80 post offices are listed for sale on a USPS real-estate website, and many are historic. At least 38 historic post offices in 19 states have been sold or put on the market, most of them in rural places. Eleven are in California, 4 are in Connecticut, and three each are in Pennsylvania and Illinois.