The mood and voices in the room were clear, Schroeder township residents were asking to keep their post office open eight hours a day.
But Deb Metzer, Deer River postmaster, and Jeff Roberts, Blackduck’s postmaster, were there to tell the 40 or so people on hand for the Thursday, March 6, 2014 evening meeting held at the Schroeder Town Hall that the decision had been made: Schroeder’s post office would drop from eight-hour service to fourhour service, and there was nothing they could do about it except decide what hours they would like to see the doors open for business.
Metzer made that announcement mid-way through the meeting and several people got up and left without saying a word.
“This process began a year and a half ago and there is no way to appeal this decision as far as I know,” Metzer said to Skip Lamb, who asked about an appeals process in light of Schroeder residents largely being kept in the dark about the plans to cut back the service.
“You could have found this online. It’s out there. Sorry you didn’t see it, but anything Congress does is online,” Metzer told Lamb.
The cutback in service was due to a lack of volume in mail and packages seen in Schroeder, said Metzer, saying upper management uses a formula that applies to all post offices nationwide in its decision process.
“It’s not just here or just in Minnesota where this is happening. Rural post offices are going to twohour, four-hour or six-hour service when cuts need to be made,” Metzer said.
When the U.S. Postal Service began having financial difficulties they formed a Post Plan, said Metzer. At first the plan called for closing rural post offices, but Metzer said Congress intervened and said you will not discontinue rural post offices.
“From that point forward the post office has engaged in cutting back service to rural areas, often keeping small post offices open by staffing them with Post Master Relief (PMTs) employees because Post Masters in these locations get to bid on full-time openings elsewhere. This is what happened to both Jeff and me. We had to move to our current locations when our original post offices were cut back in hours,” Metzer told the audience.
Lamb argued that closing rural post offices or cutting back on their hours only achieves a small amount of savings while it puts a tremendous strain on communities like Schroeder that depend upon its service, especially when the tourist season arrives and the area fills with people. Metzer agreed, but said, “Write to your Congressman and let him know how you feel.”
While the postal service is an independent agency of the government and does not receive taxpayer money for its operations, it does borrow money from the U.S. Treasury to make its payments. It processes over 800 billion mailings in the U.S. and employs 8 million people and delivers 40 percent of the world’s mail. But it has been in steady decline the last decade due to the increase of email and package delivery providers like UPS.
From 2007 to 2012 the postal service lost $10 billion in revenue, over $3 billion in First Class mail. Health care costs eat up 18 percent of its total budget. Labor costs represent 79 percent of the Postal Service total budget with 49 percent of those expenditures dedicated to delivery and 48 percent devoted to paying benefits. By 2017 the Postal Service anticipates a reduction of 146,000 workers and non-career full-time equivalent employees. More and more small post offices are being staffed by PMTs who are hourly employees with no retirement or health care benefits, Metzer said.
Metzer said cutbacks in the Northland began “five years ago when the postal service had to make some drastic cuts in our area. They started cutting back upper management in Duluth. When that wasn’t enough they went to Minneapolis and started cutting back upper management there. But they couldn’t make enough cuts to balance the budget so they kept looking for other places to make cuts and this is what they came up with.”
Schroeder has 84 rented post office boxes. Jan Dillon is the PMT currently staffing the post office and she keeps the window open for her entire time at the post office, which Metzer said was “exceptional service.”
Based on a postal survey sent out to Schroeder residents, 79 percent of the 62 respondents asked for a realignment of hours. Metzer said after reviewing postal service operational needs, the recommendation was to keep the Schroeder Post Office open from 7:30 to 11:30 a.m. Monday through Friday with Saturday hours set 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., but asked if these hours would work for the public on hand.
After some discussion the people in attendance voted to ask that the hours be set from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. daily with the Saturday hours left alone as recommended.
Skip Lamb asked if the Postal Service had taken into consideration that Schroeder, like all of Cook County, is tourist based and the population swells dramatically in the summer.
Lamb talked about the various businesses in Schroeder that need full-time postal service: Minnesota Power has a 225 megawatt power plant in Schroeder that at times has time sensitive environmental monitoring that needs to be sent through the mail. McKeever Well Drilling mails water samples for study that need a quick turn around for its customers. There are five resorts/cabins/condominiums, two campgrounds, trucking and logging businesses, two gravel pits and two solid waste sites, two nonprofits—the Cross River Heritage Center and Sugarloaf Nature Center, and all of the cabins and seasonal homes that rely on the post office.
West End Commissioner Bruce Martinson couldn’t stay for the whole meeting but before leaving he read a statement asking for the decision to be reversed and eight-hour service remain in Schroeder. Like Lamb he is a businessman in the West End and understands the importance the post office plays in his business and the life of the community.
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