Etna Green Post Office Hours to be Cut
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Jordan Fouts-
Bob Goins, postmaster for the Marion office, met with a handful of Etna Green residents Wednesday to discuss the trimmed hours. He was joined by Cheryl McKinley, Bourbon postmaster, and Mandy Henger, Etna Green postmaster relief.
Goins said the office was slated for closure at one point but was decided instead to have its hours cut to four a day. Residents and town officials at the meeting indicated they would prefer those hours to be 8 a.m. to noon.
Goins first suggested noon to 4 p.m., but residents noted that would not mesh well with the average work schedule. It would also duplicate the post office hours of neighboring towns.
Etna Green was allocated four hours based on its transaction record, Goins said. Whatever new hours are decided, he said they will be revisited after three months and, if transactions increase, may be partially restored, as he has seen at a few other offices.
“If you want more hours or want to increase them, shop at the Etna Green Post Office,” he said. “The post office is still a viable part of this community and it can continue to serve the community ... We will revisit the hours, and if this is wrong for this community, they will be changed.”
Outgoing mail will still be picked up at 4 p.m. every day and the blue drop box will remain outside. Keeping the lobby open for up to 24 hours also may be a possibility, he said, while a business in town has expressed interest in hosting a Village Post Office to sell stamps and other basic services.
He noted 765 surveys were sent to Etna Green residents regarding the hour reduction, of which only 186 were returned. Of those, 143 said to realign the hours, and nine said to drop the post office entirely.
Goins, who has held talks at close to a dozen offices in recent weeks, apologized that it was even necessary to hold the meeting. He observed that the first office where he worked at the beginning of his career decades ago is among those fallen to cost-cutting measures in recent years.
Besides office closures and hour reductions, the Postal Service has been trying to save money through staff attrition and hiring at lower wages, he said.
The Postal Service has reduced annual costs by about $15 billion since 2006, consolidated more than 200 mail-processing centers and cut its workforce by 193,000 or 28 percent, according to a Wednesday Associated Press article on the USPS decision to keep Saturday mail delivery.
Before 2006, the service was breaking even, Goins said. He acknowledged that a retirement prefunding mandate from Congress is a major contributor to USPS losses, which was cited early in the meeting by Etna Green resident Dave Price.
Price characterized the mandate to fund retirement 75 years in advance – and to do it within 10 years – as a “big black cloud overhead,” and Goins agreed.
Of the $16 billion the service lost last year, $11.1 billion of that was due to the prefunding law, according to the Associated Press. The Postal Service is not supported by tax dollars, Goins noted, but he said he does believe it will be able to break even under its cost-cutting plans.
And small towns might have seen more office closures if Congress hadn’t received so many calls of protest, he said.
“Maybe we’d be having a different type of meeting if people hadn’t said, ‘I want my post office,’” Goins remarked.
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Bob Goins, postmaster for the Marion office, met with a handful of Etna Green residents Wednesday to discuss the trimmed hours. He was joined by Cheryl McKinley, Bourbon postmaster, and Mandy Henger, Etna Green postmaster relief.
Goins said the office was slated for closure at one point but was decided instead to have its hours cut to four a day. Residents and town officials at the meeting indicated they would prefer those hours to be 8 a.m. to noon.
Goins first suggested noon to 4 p.m., but residents noted that would not mesh well with the average work schedule. It would also duplicate the post office hours of neighboring towns.
Etna Green was allocated four hours based on its transaction record, Goins said. Whatever new hours are decided, he said they will be revisited after three months and, if transactions increase, may be partially restored, as he has seen at a few other offices.
“If you want more hours or want to increase them, shop at the Etna Green Post Office,” he said. “The post office is still a viable part of this community and it can continue to serve the community ... We will revisit the hours, and if this is wrong for this community, they will be changed.”
Outgoing mail will still be picked up at 4 p.m. every day and the blue drop box will remain outside. Keeping the lobby open for up to 24 hours also may be a possibility, he said, while a business in town has expressed interest in hosting a Village Post Office to sell stamps and other basic services.
He noted 765 surveys were sent to Etna Green residents regarding the hour reduction, of which only 186 were returned. Of those, 143 said to realign the hours, and nine said to drop the post office entirely.
Goins, who has held talks at close to a dozen offices in recent weeks, apologized that it was even necessary to hold the meeting. He observed that the first office where he worked at the beginning of his career decades ago is among those fallen to cost-cutting measures in recent years.
Besides office closures and hour reductions, the Postal Service has been trying to save money through staff attrition and hiring at lower wages, he said.
The Postal Service has reduced annual costs by about $15 billion since 2006, consolidated more than 200 mail-processing centers and cut its workforce by 193,000 or 28 percent, according to a Wednesday Associated Press article on the USPS decision to keep Saturday mail delivery.
Before 2006, the service was breaking even, Goins said. He acknowledged that a retirement prefunding mandate from Congress is a major contributor to USPS losses, which was cited early in the meeting by Etna Green resident Dave Price.
Price characterized the mandate to fund retirement 75 years in advance – and to do it within 10 years – as a “big black cloud overhead,” and Goins agreed.
Of the $16 billion the service lost last year, $11.1 billion of that was due to the prefunding law, according to the Associated Press. The Postal Service is not supported by tax dollars, Goins noted, but he said he does believe it will be able to break even under its cost-cutting plans.
And small towns might have seen more office closures if Congress hadn’t received so many calls of protest, he said.
“Maybe we’d be having a different type of meeting if people hadn’t said, ‘I want my post office,’” Goins remarked.
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