Holland Post Office not closing but hours cut

About 50 people sat in the pews at the St. James Lutheran Church in Holland Tuesday evening waiting to hear if they would still have a Post Office.

The Holland Post Office is one of about seventy-five that Cindy Klaiber, the manager for Post Office operations in this region, has slated for realignment. The move is necessary for the U.S. Post Office as they face increasing shipping costs and decreasing revenue from postage as customers use electronic methods for messaging more and more often.

“A penny rise in gasoline prices costs the U.S. Post Office a million dollars a day,” Klaiber explained some of the difficulties the Post Office faces. “Private companies can add surcharges to their shipping rates but to make any change in the Post Office takes congressional action. The last rate increase took two years to get approved.”

Klaiber explained the U.S. Post Office is only funded through the sale of postage and supplies through its locations. Under the current economic climate the Post Office is examining the revenue of each Post Office location to determine whether it will remain open, have restricted hours or be closed completely. Village Post Offices —an office within a local business or town hall ran by the proprietor there— was offered as an option if an office faced closure.

Klaiber revealed the results of a recent survey t0 the crowd. Of the 538 surveys mailed to the Holland Post Office customers, 226 were returned and based on the information gathered from the surveys Klaiber had made the decision to cut the hours the Holland Post Office would be open to reduce expenses  Although not set in stone, she stated the office would likely be open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday and the open for two hours on Saturdays (she did not reveal those hours at the meeting).

This raised a few hands from the younger families in the pews. Much of the small town resides within a quarter-mile of the Post Office and therefore doesn’t qualify for home delivery of their mail —those residents have post office boxes. Since most families work outside of Holland, they would be restricted to a few hours on Saturday to pick up any mailed packages that don’t fit into the post office box.

“It seems to me that customer service is the only way the Post Office can survive,” a resident, Dan Herman told Klaiber. “And you are going the opposite direction by making it harder for us to get our packages. If I have to wait till Saturday to pick up packages, then I am going to pay the extra money for UPS to deliver it.”

Klaiber stated the hours were only a suggestion at this point and as more and more people in the church raised objections to them, she conceded that maybe they would be adjusted. “I don’t like to have the Post Office open at different hours during the week, but maybe we need to consider a two-day early schedule and three days we are open later.”

Klaiber also stated a parcel locker could be an option. She explained these were large lockers that packages would be placed in for the post office box customers to pick up. A key to the parcel locker would be placed in the customers’ post office box to access the parcel box, once the customer retrieved their package they would leave the key in the parcel box.

This seemed to appease some of the residents but Herman pointed out that if the parcel boxes were full then it would still slow the delivery process.

Klaiber recognized that certain difficulties remained with the decision to cut the hours of operation to six hours per weekday but told the crowd those hours could be increased if revenue for the Holland Post Office increased. She stated the Holland Post Office hours changed would likely be announced next week and then take affect before December.

She implored the crowd to contact their elected representatives to make changes to help the USPS remain viable.