Postal Service lists 3,700 branches for possible closing

U.S. Postal Service is studying the possibility of closing three Plymouth County post offices.

Brunsville, Oyens and Westfield's post offices are on a list of 178 Iowa post offices and 3,700 across the nation the USPS is reviewing for possible closure in an effort to save money.

In the past five years, mail volume has dropped 20 percent across the nation, due in part to electronic mail and the poor economy, according to Brian Sperry, a regional spokesman for the USPS.

"The postal service lost $8.5 billion last year, and it's projected to lose $8 billion this year," he said, noting that the USPS uses no tax dollars to operate.

Post offices put on the list to review for possible closure have the least amount of traffic and retail sales and have a workload of less than two hours a day, Sperry said.

Just because a post office is on the list to review doesn't mean it will be closed, he added.

"It's not a quick process," Sperry said. "It's long and it provides our customers plenty of opportunities to provide us feedback and let us know, if their post office were to close, how it would affect them."

A community public meeting will be held in each location to discuss the process and gather input.

The dates and times of those meetings are not set yet.

The next step in the process for Brunsville, Oyens and Westfield is for the USPS to study and gather data on them.

Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, who chairs the subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service, called closings a "difficult but necessary step" to save the Postal Service from collapse.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said the plan would hurt rural communities without solving the Postal Service's money problem.

"The fact is, maintaining our nation's rural post offices costs the Postal Service less than 1 percent of its total budget and is not the cause of its financial crisis," she said. "While there are some areas where postal services could be consolidated or moved into a nearby retail store to ensure continued access, this simply is not an option in many rural and remote areas."

As it closes branches, the Postal Service plans to set up what it calls "village post offices" in supermarkets and gas stations to provide basic services such as stamps and flat-rate package shipping.

The Postal Service has cut 110,000 jobs and reduced costs by $11 billion since 2008 to offset a sharp drop in mail as people do more business online. Still, the Postal Service projects a deficit this year of $8.3 billion.

First-class mail, one of the largest revenue sources, declined from 103.7 billion pieces in 2001 to 78.2billion pieces in 2010.

Collins has proposed a bill she says would ease the Postal Service's budget deficit by reforming workers' compensation and contracting requirements and letting the postmaster tap "an enormous overpayment" into retirement funds.