The USPO (United States Post Office) in the town where I pick up my mail is moving. Or the satellite building is moving. That’s just a place where you can pick up your mail at your PO Box. Ya see, unlike 99.9% of the rest of the country, we don’t get mail delivery service. We have to have a box at the PO.
Anyhoo, the main post office is a mess. Way too crowded, and parking is very limited. So a few years ago they set up this satellite office. It’s not staffed. But it works. The location is perfect and the parking is great. This serves 800 people (we are a small resort town).
The PO has decided to sell this little gem. And move the satellite into the core of town. To the busiest intersection in town. Oh, and there is no parking, so that may be a problem.
You have to understand what tourist towns are like. We are a ski town (Breckenridge CO). For 6 months out of the year we are very, very busy. The population of the county quadruples during the Christmas season. It gets a bit hectic when 75% of the people here are visitors. Add snow and ice and rent-a-cars into the mix and you can imagine what traffic is like. The locals have learned to deal with it and stay away form ‘downtown’.
The ‘downtown’ corridor is for tourists to mosey from shop to shop while looking for that perfect pair of snowflake earrings. It is NOT a good place to plop down a Post Office that just the locals will use (remember, this is just a satellite office with no services. It’s just a place for PO boxes). They are adding the traffic that 800 PO boxes will create to the busiest intersection in town. And oops. There isn’t any parking.
They did this without consulting anyone. The Postmaster for the town wasn’t even consulted. Nobody new until they announced that it was a “done deal”. Well, the city council and pretty much everyone is furious. Letters have been written and Senators called. The PO says that the current site is sold, and they must move in 60 days. Must Move.
They are willing to look at alternative locations. (the current one that was sold was perfect). So under the gun, they are going to go real estate shopping. The person they buy from will be able to name their price.
Anyone wonder why they are 7 billion dollars in debt?
Incompetent idiots. A 5 minute phone call to your own Postmaster would have nipped this in the bud.
Too bad they weren’t private, then they would have asked permission. Oh, wait… And maybe the reason the USPO is in debt is because we keep the cost of first class mail low because we have to deliver mail between Buttfuck, Alabama and Hooty Hollow, Tennesee for the same rate as sending a piece of mail between two addresses in Boston.
They certainly need a new business model. What they have is not working. Making random ass decisions without any local input, or it would seem in this case, not even looking at the proposed site and how it would affect service is not helping.
The local Postmaster was not even involved in this. Or if she was, she was told to shut up and keep her opinions to herself. I believe that she had no idea, and found out about this at the same time the town council did.
I was not at the initial meeting when this bomb was dropped. The Postmaster FOR OUR TOWN was quoted as saying “I have no idea who picked the new location, and parking is going to be a problem”. I would think that it might have been a good idea to at least consult the Postmaster. Or, I dunno, the Mayor. Or town planners?
What a wonderful comment on working together this has been. The USPO is willing to work with you if you get US and State Senators and Representatives to threaten them. Yes, I’m mad. I work for the Gov and this makes all of us look bad.
We will be following the money on this deal. It would almost be sad if this was done out of absolute stupidity and some sort of corruption wasn’t involved.
There are any number of reasons why the Postal Service has lost billions of dollars in recent years. Among them are poor management decisions, rising fuel costs (I’ll note that while the private parcel delivery services have been adding a fuel surcharge to the price of their services, USPS has not been doing that, and has no plans to begin doing it), limitations on their ability to increase revenues by raising rates, and a statutory requirement to fully pre-fund certain retirement costs, years in advance of when they will be disbursed.
Probably the most significant factor, though, is the drop in third class mail volume associated with both the recession, and the increased use of online methods of doing business. This has lowered revenues faster than the USPS has been able to cut operating costs.
enipla, is it certain that they will be buying their new satellite office outright, or is it possible that they will be leasing?
Anyway, I’m sorry you have to go through this PITA, and I hope they have a satisfactory replacement on line toot sweet.
Nobody knows. The existing main facility is way, way substandard and has been bitched about for years. We finally got the satellite facility about 4 years ago. This helps the traffic problems at the main PO, and the entire town.
Let me preface this by stating that I don’t have a box at the sat facility that is to move. It won’t really affect me directly.
The USPO did this without consulting anyone. It’s ridiculous that they are now planning on moving the satellite facility to 3 blocks from the main PO. And there will be for all practical purposes NO parking. Understand that very few people actually live in town. It’s mostly bars, ski rental joints and tee shirt shops. It’s tourist central.
This seems like a really bad idea to me and every resident of Breckenridge and Summit County.
I’m guessing that they will end up paying more for a piece of land that is less suitable and harder to get to.
I am in GIS for the county. My Wife is an appraiser for the county. The asset manangement team at the USPO are clearly idiots. That is all we know for sure.
:Note - I don’t understand why this was moved from the PIT. It is not MPSIMS. If the MODS would like, I could through in a few fucks and shits, but that is not the way i usually communicate.
They tend to reserve the Pit for topics that are likely to generate strong feelings between Dopers, where there are likely to be strong differences of opinion, and where people are likely to get nasty with one another.
While your situation sucks, the fact is that most people who come in here are likely to express sympathy for your problem. No-one is likely to call you an idiot, or tell you that you’re being stupid for criticizing this decision. When Dopers themselves are unlikely to take offense, and unlikely to start a mudslinging match, the topic is often moved to MPSIMS.
Admittedly, this is an imperfect system, but for the most part i think it works pretty well. Check out the threads currently in the Pit; most of them involve not only Pittings of specific people or things, but involve topics where Dopers get pretty heated with one another.
This actually is good economic sense. Most of the cost of handling a letter is the initial processing and the delivery. The actually shipping between PO’s is small. If the USPS had to process 1st class letters into categories by cost it would add a lot more than it would save. This was actually figured out by some guy before 1840 for the Royal Mail when the shipping part was more expensive than it is now. (Google “uniform penny post”.)
It’s only when you get to significant size packages that the costs of relative shipping distance becomes noticable enough to warrant a price differential.
As to the OP: It is my experience that the requirements for locating a new PO is that it is inaccessible and without adequate parking. Your town’s situation is not unique.
It’s not theshipping cost, it’s how many times it gets touched. Mail from a rural location will have to go through more sorting than one between New York and LA.
“Looked good on paper” was probably the decider in this case. They had an offer for the land where the satellite building was, they could maybe get a deal on the new building, and “Oh, look, it’s right there downtown where it will be accessible to everybody.”
Thank you for your response. I have been here as long as you and didn’t really see it that way.
As I am angered at what the USPS has done, and how it will affect thousands of people, and how they did not even ask “what if” I did not feel that it was mundane or pointlessas it affects thousands of people and deserved a PIT thread.
I think so too. Rental property for a ski shop in Nebraska also looks good on paper.
The USPS did not do their home work. Not at all.
They did not talk to anyone in the County about this. I suspect that the powers that be have never even been to Colorado.
And now they are behind the 8 ball and have no where to go. And have already sold the property that they are on.
ooops:smack:
Those that understand the town where not consulted. And now the USPS and those that use its services are pretty much fucked.
I am been working for County Gov for 17 years. So has my Wife. When I read about this in the newspaper, I thought it was a joke and perhaps an article that was meant for the April Fools Day edition of the newspaper. That’s how bad this move is. It’s like something from the Onion, only its’ true.