Missoulian: Keep rural post offices open
The U.S. Postal Service hasn’t seen a balanced budget in a long time. What it has seen, as the use of electronic communications has risen to replace paper and envelopes, is significant declines in the amount of mail it receives. The Postal Service fully expects to be insolvent again this month, and is estimating overall losses of $9 billion this year.
This despite the fact that it has already made a host of changes aimed at reducing its costs – to the tune of $12 billion over the last four fiscal years.
More cost-saving measures, it says, are needed. And most anyone would agree.
However, the Postal Service should consider other ways of saving money before it looks at closing post offices in rural Montana.
In July, the independent government agency – which receives no tax dollars for its operating expenses – announced that it would begin studying the “viability” of some 3,700 post offices across the nation, including 85 in Montana.
Our congressional delegates responded to this news with a strong defense of our rural post offices.
