Fairfield’s Mayor Trent files appeal to stop post office closure
By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette
Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2011, 4 p.m. — Fairfield Mayor Tommy Trent has filed an appeal regarding the decision to close the city’s U.S. Post Office.
In a letter dated Oct. 27, 2011, the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission acknowledged receipt of Trent’s appeal, and forwarded him the forms he will need to include additional information with his appeal. The deadline for additional information in the appeal case is Nov. 25, 2011.
In Trent’s appeal to the U.S. Postal Service dated Oct. 12th, he states that the USPS failed to consider the effect of the closure on the community, and if the closure is consistent with congressional policy to provide “a maximum degree of effective and regular postal services to rural areas, communities and small towns where post offices are not self-sustaining.”
Fairfield’s future economic growth is tied to having a post office with retail services in its city limits, Trent states.
The appeal also says that the USPS was ignorant of the facts about Fairfield, as well as with its own post office, stating that the USPS “showed a total lack of understanding of the facility and its customers” because the postal service did not know:
- that Fairfield is an incorporated city;
- that the postal serviced owned the existing building and land;
- that the Fairfield Post Office had general delivery customers;
- and the postal service did not know the number of businesses and civic groups served by its own office.
The postal service’s responses to community concerns were also not truly addressed, Trent said in the appeal. Safety of incoming and outgoing mail and parcels is a concern to area residents served by the post office.
Trent writes that the USPS “ambushed” the Fairfield post office and set it up for closure by not maintaining its own building and reducing the office’s hours of operation, which in turn, reduced revenue and customer access. He further alleges the USPS failed to use current figures when it calculated cost savings, and it failed to properly consider the fact it owns the land and building in those savings.
The Postal Regulatory Commission will review the appeal, and can only determine if the postal service’s decision followed the proper guidelines. It can only either affirm the decision to close the post office or remand it back to the postal service for further consideration.
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