Post office to transform
Dear Editor: I have noted with interest your recent coverage of the Postal Service and I would like to update you on the Transformation Plan that has been submitted to Congress.
The plan is a blueprint for the future of the Postal Service in the face of a changing mail industry, technological advances in communications and the current recession. Since its founding more than 225 years ago, the Postal Service has been committed to providing every American with the fundamental right to have mail service at affordable rates. The Transformation Plan protects that right into the 21st century.
The plan offers solutions to the current financial problems the Postal Service now faces and in the long-term calls for a new business model to replace our 30-year old current operating structure. A new business model will require legislative changes, essentially rewriting the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act that formed the current Postal Service.
The Postal Service gets most of its revenue from first-class mail – the kind of mail used to pay bills and send greetings cards.
Any decline in this type of mail has huge consequences, since two-thirds of our costs are covered from this revenue. For the first time since the Great Depression, mail volume is down. Add to that equation the 100 to 300 new addresses created every year in the Uniontown Post Office and you can see the crisis we face. Trends like that threaten our ability to deliver the mail. But we have solutions.
For the long term, the Postal Service will ask Congress to adopt a new business model, called a Commercial Government Enterprise (CGE). Changing to a CGE would be a big step toward placing the Postal Service on a more business-like footing.
We would be expected to provide traditional and nontraditional products and services and implement market-based pricing.
Universal mail delivery would be maintained by giving the Postal Service the flexibility and modern management tools to survive in a new economy.
The Postal Service delivers 46 percent of the world’s mail. No postal system does what the U.S. Postal Service does today. But what organization can keep the same business model for 30 years and hope to survive?
No business could. Any organization must be able to change in order to survive. No one 30 years ago could have predicted the rise of the Internet, electronic bill payment, and competition from global mail providers. To meet these challenges, the Postal Service needs a new regulatory framework. The Transformation Plan will provide that.
As the postmaster for Uniontown, I’m excited to be a part of this Transformation Plan. Delivering the mail is a public trust, and the Postal Service is committed to guaranteeing mail delivery well into the future. This plan is the first step in that process and sparks a public policy dialogue with the American people.
Pat Farrell, postmaster
Uniontown