A letter to our readers from Dala Whittaker, publisher Those U.S. Postal Service “cost cutting” measures are about to hit home -- in a big way. This Saturday, November 2, our mail is all going to be sent to and handled through a facility in another town – Willow Springs – in another county – Howell County, even though all that mail will pass through our town on its way between Springfield and Willow Springs. There will be no rural route mail carriers operating out of the Cabool Post Office. They will drive to Willow Springs, get their mail and drive back to Cabool to run their routes. If you mail a letter at Cabool, it will go to Springfield (as it does now), and if it is addressed to a Cabool resident, it will be sent by Springfield to Willow Springs where mail carriers will pick it up and bring it back to this community. Your letter will get an extra 34 miles or so of travel; your carrier will drive an extra 34 miles or so to get it. Some folks on rural routes may see their mail delivered a little earlier than usual, but some will see their mail coming later than usual. If you have a post office box, the mail that was usually ready for pick-up in your box by 9:30 a.m. won’t be there until 11:30 a.m. because someone has to bring that mail back from Willow Springs and then put it into the boxes. Other changes are coming down the pipe. You can look forward to reduced hours of operation at our local post office. The postmaster and clerk you see at the post office will be working fewer hours, and the possibility of having just a part-time postmaster or no postmaster at all may be a reality within two years. So what, you may ask. Let me tell you one way all of this will affect you, a reader of the Cabool Enterprise. Cabool Enterprise, Inc. publishes the Pennysaver Shopper, which we mail to most households in the county. In Cabool, you either get the Pennysaver or, if you are a subscriber, you get the Enterprise. Each week, we print, address, stuff, bundle, compute postage, load and take the Pennysaver to the Cabool Post Office on Tuesday. After everything is weighed and computed, we leave the Cabool Pennysavers there, then – to get delivery on Wednesday and save some on postage – we personally transport the rest of the Pennysavers to the post offices in Houston, Licking and Raymondville. Starting next week, we will also have to make the 34-mile or so round trip to Willow Springs to take the Cabool rural route mailing there, because there will no longer be anyone at Cabool Post Office to sort and deliver the rural routes. We can leave the post office box mailing there, but the remainder we have to transport – at our expense and with no added value for us – to a post office in another town and another county, all so it can come right back to Cabool. And the next day we get to do the same with the newspaper. For decades the Enterprise’s office has been located about a block from the post office, and we have taken our weekly mailing to the post office, handed in our paperwork and postage check and enjoyed next-day delivery for our local subscribers. The Cabool subscribers’ papers never had to leave the community – the rural route carriers sorted their routes, the post office box holder mail was sorted, and that week’s news was in your hands. The mail for subscribers outside of Cabool went to Springfield for distribution. Next week, our one-block trip to the post office is increased by more time, more manpower, and more mileage – again at our expense and with no added value to us. We will still take our newspapers into the Cabool Post Office to be weighed and computed, then we will load up those addressed to Cabool rural routes and drive them all the way to Willow Springs – where they will be picked up by the same rural route carriers who used to sort them in Cabool and brought back into the community for delivery. If Cabool were a community that was far off the beaten track, making it necessary for a mail truck to have to detour out of its way, all of this might make more sense to me. But Cabool is right on Highway 60, the four-lane road that runs from Springfield to Willow Springs. You have to drive right through Cabool to get from one to the other. The United States Postal Service says the changes for the Cabool Post Office are necessary to reduce costs. I’m not buying it – but I am paying for it. We all are. Dala Whittaker, publisher
Posted on: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 03:18:23 +0000
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