The Postal Service is one of the federal functions provided for in the Constitution of the United States. And post offices, in some ways, have connected our people and businesses and bound our country together. It was long a matter of importance, convenience and pride for a small community, in particular, to have a post office.
But times change, and today, the Postal Service is operating at a huge loss. In just the first quarter of this year, for example, postal operations experienced a staggering loss of $2.6 billion.
So it is really no surprise that there are plans now on the table to close as many as 3,700 post offices around the country - out of a total of almost 32,000!
Astoundingly, 84 percent of the offices scheduled for closing reportedly take in less than $27,500 a year and have less than two hours worth of work per day. Can anyone really argue in favor of keeping them open?
The South Chattanooga post office on 40th Street, the East Chattanooga office on Amnicola Highway and the Highland Park office on Hawthorne Street are all targeted, as is a downtown Cleveland office on Broad Street.
Probably few people want "their" post office to close. But many of our communications and transactions these days take place electronically, rather than by traditional mail, so post offices simply are not as necessary as they were in the past.
Massive Postal Service losses clearly justify reining in uneconomical services and facilities.