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Deliver the mail
Most of our readers, we’re sure, have by now heard of the United States Postal Service’s proposal to raise first-class mail rates by five cents, to 30 cents. It is accompanied by an average 22 percent increase in the cost of second class mail, which includes newspapers and magazines. Other classes of mail will face similar increases in cost.
The rate increase, according to a Postal Service spokesman, will cost the average American’s annual postal bill by about $10. The rate increase request, according to news reports, was accompanied by 4,400 pages of supporting documentation. We wonder how much of the Postal Service’s operating budget was spent generating that paperwork.
This comes on the heels of another study which suggests that the USPS should restructure its delivery standards, allowing a longer time for delivery of mail to more distant locations.
The USPS Board of Governors, in requesting the increase, pleads that the service requires more than $7 billion in new revenue each year, most of which must come from postage.
Meanwhile, the Postal Service has apparently been wasting its resources on innovations like no-lick postal stamps — advertised last year as the first “peel and stick” stamps.
We think that the Postal Service would be better off concentrating on fulfilling its primary mission: timely delivery of the nation’s mail.
The horror stories about the USPS’s performance are so numerous that they approach legendary proportions. Our readers in the faraway suburbs of Washington, D.C. regularly call the news office to complain that their Rappahannock News does not arrive until the Monday or Tuesday following its publication.
The Pony Express got mail to its destination faster than that.
We hope that the new rate, which must be approved by the Postal Rate Commission which oversees the Postal Service, will allow the USPS to return mail delivery in the country to a passing grade.
Right now, the Postal Service gets an “F.”
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