Our post offices probably aren’t the first thing to come to mind on a list of vital social/economic assets here on this coast. Like many things — a healthy local newspaper and the Social Security system, for example — we take postal service for granted. We can’t afford to.
Gearhart residents continue to be in limbo after the U.S. Postal Service moved to close their post office two years ago. Mail service was to be moved to Seaside.
At the time, City Councilor Dana Gould said many people in the community relied heavily on the post office on Pacific Way, including those who telecommute and operate home businesses. She described the post office as a community space accessible to elderly residents and people without cars. She also wondered about the fate of two local post office employees. “That’s a community center for us, we all meet down there,” Gould said.
On March 13, Gearhart city staff posted an update that the Postal Service is looking for a contractor that would facilitate reopening the post office, but “cannot confirm that even if a new contractor is found, the existing building will continue to serve as the pick up location. That will be a determination made by the contractor. The USPS is aware of complaints regarding the existing building.”
Closure of a small town post office is traumatic. A few years ago, it made considerable news when the quaint one in Nahcotta, Washington was chopped off and service moved to Ocean Park. Chinook Observer columnist Cate Gable later shared her feelings:
“I’m still mourning and furious about the loss of our Little Nahcotta Post Office That Could. It was a gathering place for our once-bustling community by the bay. It was great when Jayne’s Bakery was still adjacent to our post office: it was truly the hub of ‘downtown Nahcotta,’ a place to see art, find out the latest gossip, grab an amazingly delicious scone, post a letter and get on with the day. Now I’m left with a miserable ‘N’ after my original Nahcotta post office box number — the last vestige of our charming bayside railroad terminus. Years hence, ‘Nahcotta’ will likely appear on historic maps and nowhere else.”
Though not on the same level of heartache as the rural school consolidations of decades ago, having your own local post office confers a profound sense of place, in addition to the many pragmatic functions they perform.
However, loss of individual post offices soon may become the least of our concerns.
Even bigger problems
If you’re on the electronic mailing list for updates from the esteemed Brookings think tank, you will have seen last week’s research essay, “The US Postal Service’s fiscal crisis.”
It was preceded by an analysis in January that found:
• Rural counties with better access to post offices have higher levels of small-business activity.
• This relationship persists after accounting for broadband access and local economic conditions.
• The strongest links appear in service and trade sectors that are likely to rely on routine, physical access to postal services.
Postal policy debates often overlook these economic spillovers of the postal network in rural areas.
Last week’s article (https://tinyurl.com/Brookings-Postal) is profoundly troubling, raising grave doubts about how much longer we will have the same national postal service that generations have relied on. And yes — we all have gripes about occasional bumps in service. But the slow-simmering crisis in the Postal Service seems about to burst into an all-out struggle for survival, and we may soon come to realize how undervalued this national asset really is.
A few excerpts of Brookings’ analysis are worth quoting at length.
• “U.S. Postal Service (USPS) leadership has warned that USPS will exhaust its available cash within the next year. That warning reflects more than a temporary shortfall. After nearly two decades of operating losses, the Postal Service has reached its statutory borrowing limit and cannot finance ongoing deficits through additional debt. This fiscal crisis reflects a structural mismatch between what Congress requires the Postal Service to do and how it is financed.”
• “For millions of Americans, particularly in low-density and rural communities, the mail remains essential infrastructure. It delivers prescription medications, ballots, and online purchases, and it supports local small-business activity. In many areas, private carriers do not provide retail access or affordable pricing. The USPS nationwide delivery network ensures that access does not depend on geography or profitability.”
• “The United States has thus far required the Postal Service to preserve universal service without fundamentally revising how it is financed. Rate increases alone will not close the gap. Service reductions redistribute costs onto rural and low-density communities. Continued reliance on borrowing is constrained by statute. What remains is a policy choice.”
• “The central question is not whether universal service has value. It is whether Congress will finance that value explicitly in a digital economy where the old cross-subsidy no longer suffices. Today, the same shrinking revenue base is expected to fund both universal service and the federally governed retirement obligations — an arrangement that converts long-run structural imbalance into an immediate cash constraint.”
A functional presidency and Congress would immediately set about debating and addressing the mismatch between what revenue the Postal Service produces and what it is obliged to spend. Instead, we are probably left in the situation of the mail train depicted in a famous silent movie, chugging relentlessly toward a break in the tracks over a deep chasm.
Whenever any of us speaks to a federal lawmaker, our post offices should be at or near the top of our list of concerns.