Meeting set for July 17 on reduction of Abbot post office hours

Other post offices on Post Plan list
include Brownville

By Mike Lange
Staff Writer

    ABBOT — The U.S. Postal Service will hold a public meeting at the Abbot post office on Thursday, July 17 at 4 p.m. to solicit input on a plan to cut back the operating hours due to reduced customer traffic.
    The realignment of operating hours is part of the USPS Post Plan, designed to keep rural post offices open but at a reduced cost.

Observer photo/Mike Lange

    ABBOT POST OFFICE — The Abbot post office’s operating hours may be reduced later this year.

    According to Post Plan coordinator Jim McCartney, surveys were sent to residents “to help determine the best course of action for providing postal services” which will include cutting operations to six hours per day.
    McCartney’s letter indicated that the Abbot post office isn’t in any immediate danger of closing. “Unless the community has a strong preference … for conducting a discontinuance study for the Abbot post office and establishing one of the additional services (a contractor-based retail unit), the postal service intends to maintain the post office with six hours of window service each weekday,” he wrote.
    The Abbot post office is currently open seven and a half hours per day Monday through Friday and three and a half hours on Saturday, according to Postmaster Shelley Knowlton, who has been with USPS for 24 years.
    The facility was relocated to the former Abbot Elementary School, which is owned by the town, on West Road (Route 16) in 2000. The USPS leases the building, said Knowlton.
    The USPS will also hold hearings at 13 other rural post offices this week on the Post Plan realignment, including Brownville on July 17 at 6:30 p.m.
    The other affected post offices are in Belgrade Lakes, Birch Harbor, Freedom, Greenbush, Hanover, Monhegan, Passadumkeag, Port Clyde, Smithfield, South Bristol, Troy and Winter Harbor.
    Melissa Lohnes from the USPS corporate communications office in Boston told the Observer that the agency takes into account “all the feedback we get at these meetings. We based the proposed hours on the times when retail services are utilized and adjusted them to meet the customers’ needs.”
    Lohnes added that feedback at the public meetings is very important. “If enough people feel that the schedule isn’t suitable, we’ll certainly take their feelings into consideration,” she said. “The public is encouraged to attend.”
    The realignment of rural post office operating hours is only one step being taken by the agency to try and stem mounting financial losses.
    According to a fact sheet on the USPS website, a 25 percent decline in mail volume since 2007 has reduced annual revenue by $10 billion, despite regular price increases as permitted by law.
    As many people switch to email, online banking and other electronic communications, their greatest revenue loss ($7.8 billion) has been in their most profitable product: first-class mail.
    There are approximately 420 post offices in Maine employing 3,000 people, according to USPS.
    Maine nearly lost its Hampden USPS processing facility a few years ago, but Maine’s Congressional delegation led the fight to keep it open. Closure would have meant the loss or relocation of about 170 jobs.
    It also would have left Maine with only one processing plant in the southern Maine city of Scarborough.