The U.S. Postal Service will hold a “community meeting” in the lobby of the Nicholson Post Office at noon on Thursday, Oct. 25, to take comment on cutting back operations at the post office.
The meeting follows distribution of a survey in which Nicholson postal patrons were asked to select one of four choices regarding future service at the Post Office:
•reduce weekday window service from the current level of eight hours per weekday to six
•close the post office and make all service available through rural carriers (who currently work out of the Commerce Post Office)
•subcontract post office operations to a local business
•close the post office and relocate post office boxes to “a nearby” post office
The survey also asked recipients to select the hours of operation for the Nicholson Post Office if hours are reduced to six per day.
According to a letter sent to postal patrons, the meeting will be held “to answer questions and provide additional information about POST Plan. At the meeting, local management will share the results of the survey, answer questions and solicit input regarding the time of day the Post Office will be open. Although the results will be known and shared, the Postal Service will not make a final decision regarding this office until after the public meeting. This will enable the Postal Service to obtain all community input and opinions, from both the surveys and the meeting, before making a decision.”
The Nicholson Post Office currently delivers mail to 290 post office boxes in the Nicholson Post Office. Another 1,667 customers in the Nicholson (30565) zip code receive mail from rural carriers who work four Nicholson area routes out of the Commerce Post Office.
Vickie McElroy is the “officer in charge” — the Nicholson Post Office’s only employee — and she reports that the Postal Service is phasing her job out.
“They’re hiring just ‘postmaster relief’ — part-time employees who will get no benefits,” she explained. That person would keep the post office open 30 hours a week instead of the current 40.
She also said she’s already been notified that as of Jan. 12, the office will go to a six-hour-day.
Local postal patrons, McElroy said, are not happy.
“They’re afraid they’re going to close the post office,” she said. “But what they’re (the Postal Service) telling us is they’re going to reduce the hours and see how that works.”
