Good reason for post office policy

Joni Martin from Hawthorn Woods was heading in the right direction when speaking about the fact that bureaucracy is killing the post office, but she gets there the wrong way and her facts are incorrect. The 60-day hold policy on mail is not an edict issued by the Barrington postmaster, but a national policy to prevent abuse of this free service.

Holding mail for 60 days and then turning it over to someone who comes in to pick it up does have a cost. It costs time to set aside the mail. It costs money to store the mail and when someone comes in to pick it up, another employee must go and get this mail.

She goes on to say that the USPS is supported by taxpayers money and there is a “big brother bailout.” The bailout referred to is actually a return of some of the money that the USPS has prepaid to fund retirement medical costs. No other government agency or private enterprise is required by law to do this.

The USPS has been a self-sustaining quasi-governmental agency which has depended solely on its own budget since the early ‘70s. The current bill in Congress regarding the USPS is designed to hamstring the USPS and one should look at where the support is coming from to do this. UPS and FedEx both have lobbyists working on their behalf and should the USPS fail, they both would stand to make a great deal of money.

Joni Martin was right about bureaucracy killing the post office, but she got there because she had a complaint about not getting something for free from the post office. What makes me an expert on this subject? I have worked for the USPS for the past 26 years and I personally know the postmaster of Barrington.

Mike Kelley

Gurnee