Read the article below and please call, email, or write Congressman Blumenauer and ask him to help us keep the Brooklyn Post Office from closing. Earl knows about the issue. A simple email saying “Please help us stop the closure of Brooklyn post office!” will get the message across.
Address: The Honorable Earl Blumenauer
729 NE Oregon, Ste 115,
Portland, OR 97232
(503) 231-2300 Fax (503) 230-5413
Postal Service considers closing six Oregon stations
by Bill Graves, The Oregonian
Tuesday August 04, 2009, 4:34 PMThe U.S. Postal Service is weighing whether to close six Oregon post offices to save costs in the face of money shortages caused by the recession.
The agency’s Portland District operates 467 post offices in Southwest Washington and Oregon and will consider closing three stations in Portland, two in Salem and one on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene, said Ronald Anderson, spokesman for the Portland District.
Nationally, the independent federal agency, which is self supporting and receives no tax money, may run $7 billion in the red this year, Anderson said. The Postal Service has seen a 20 percent drop in business, both in Oregon and nationwide, he said. Companies have cut back mailing and consumers are relying more on online banking and email.
The federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) last week put the Postal Services on its “High-Risk List of federal areas in need of transformation.” The GAO expects mail volume this year to drop by 28 billion pieces to a total of 175 billion envelopes, boxes and other packages.
The agency, which is under Congressional mandate to break even, adds about 1.2 million new addresses each year. Of 32,741 post offices nationwide, the Postal Services is reviewing about 3,200 for possible closure. In Portland, the Postal Service will consider closing Solomon Station, 620 S.W. Main St.; Central Station, 204 S.W. Fifth Avenue, and Brooklyn Station, 1410 S.E. Powell Blvd.
Daryl Phillippi of the Brooklyn neighborhood questions why the Postal Service would close a station that is so consistently busy that he sometimes goes to the Sellwood branch to avoid the crowd.
“There is a line going out the door most of the time,” he said.
The Postal Service is collecting customer surveys on the possibility of consolidating Solomon Station with University Station about four blocks south. If the director recommends closing Solomon Station, his proposal will be reviewed by a team at Postal Service headquarters in Washington, D.C., Anderson said.
No decisions will be made until October, he said. Once the agency decides to close a station, he said, it will be at least another three months before the branch is shut down.
In the event of closures, the agency expects to move employees to other locations. The Postal Service, Anderson said, has never laid off a worker in its history.
— Bill Graves
