During FY , another 86 more offices were suspended, 27 of which were reopened by the end of the fiscal year, thus adding 59 to the backlog. As of the end of FY , there were still offices under suspension. Since the end of FY , another 28 discontinuances have been announced in Postal Bulletin, and a handful of other post offices have been reopened. There are now about offices still under suspension.
The Postal Service hopes to close the books on these suspended post offices during fiscal years and Hacker Valley, WV, post office, suspended June , still under suspension. When the Postal Service updated the PRC about the status of suspensions at the end of FY , the spreadsheet it shared showed the dates when the proposal to close had been posted, when the community meeting was held, and when a final determination to close was made.
For the post offices that would be discontinued during FY , the table provided most of the dates. But for other post offices, the table was largely empty. Had these steps in the discontinuance process not taken place yet? Is the Postal Service planning to post the proposal to discontinue at nearby post offices, invite comments, hold public meetings, and do all the other steps in the discontinuance process for all of these post offices?
The Postal Service announces post office discontinuances in the bi-monthly Postal Bulletin. By going through the past ten years of issues, one can put together a list of discontinuances announced since Oct. You can see such a list here. The Postal Bulletin announcements for can be conveniently found on PostalPro ; for the previous years, the Postal Bulletin archive is here.
In order to learn how suspensions figured into the closing picture, we combined the Postal Bulletin discontinuance list with several lists of emergency suspensions that the Postal Service shared with the PRC during the ACRs for and another for , , , and According to the announcements in Postal Bulletin , the Postal Service discontinued about 1, post offices during FY to , plus another 28 so far in FY Our list and map show these 1, post offices: 1, main post offices, stations, 75 branches, and community post offices CPOs.
You can see this full list, with a larger map, here. A spreadsheet version of the data is here , and a Carto map is here and here. This list is strictly unofficial and very imperfect. The suspension lists often lack information that would be helpful in identifying the specific offices, and in general, the Postal Service tends to be rather withholding about such information.
Back in , when the PRC asked for a list of offices under suspension, the Postal Service actively fought to keep the list non-public. Our list is especially imperfect when it comes to addresses. While a few do get relocated, most post offices stay where they are for decades, and in the minds of local citizens, the building is the post office. The numbers assume nearly all of these suspended offices will be discontinued, although a few of the more recently suspended offices will probably be reopened.
The numbers do not include post offices that were suspended during this ten-year period if they were subsequently reopened. Pimmit Branch, VA, discontinued Nov. As the table shows, during , closings averaged per year. As indicated by a report done by the Congressional Research Service, in there were a total of 35, post offices, stations, and branches; by , there were a total of 32, — a decline of about 3, over 38 years, about a hundred a year.
As the table shows, no post offices were discontinued during fiscal years , and But during those years, about post offices were suspended and not reopened, i. So when the Postal Service reported to the PRC that no post office has been closed during , , and , it was true in the sense that none was discontinued.
But post offices did continue to close by emergency suspension. Of the 1, completed and pending discontinuances, nearly a thousand — 62 percent — involved an emergency suspension.
The ACR suspension lists provide information about the cause for the suspension in cases. Of these, suspensions 47 percent were caused by a problem renewing the lease; 22 percent were caused by safety issues; 99 19 percent were caused by problems staffing the office; and 64 12 percent were caused by damage to the building.
The lease issues have been the most contentious. Many communities and post office lessors have felt that the Postal Service deliberately created an issue over renewing the lease simply to justify closing the post office. To learn more about the communities impacted by the closings, we added some Census data to the list of 1, discontinuances and suspensions. We found population data on about 1, Zip Codes. Nemo, TX, Post Office, suspended over lease issue, still under suspension.
That percentage is also indicated by the fact that only about of the 1, post offices were stations and branches, i. Given that the Postal Service rarely closes the main post office in a city without relocating it, this means that the remaining 1, offices were probably small main post offices, remotely managed post offices, and community post offices in rural areas.
In terms of population, a total population of 7. Approximately , of these people about , households lived in rural areas. That so many of the closed post offices were rural is a point worth emphasizing.
As for the or so Zip Code areas for which Census data were not available, in 80 cases the Postal Bulletin announcement indicates that the Zip Code was being discontinued along with the post office. The communities that lost their Zip Codes also lost a piece of their identity — one of the fears people typically express when their post office may close. The list of 1, closures and suspensions does not include contract postal units CPUs , i.
A community post office is a post office that had originally been an independent office operated by a USPS postmaster but that at some point got converted to a contract unit operated by a private contractor. In , there were 1, of them. You can redeem one coupon per month once you complete your trial. However, you don't need to wait for the Supplies Kit to arrive in order to print postage.
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