Starbuck Keeps Post Office

STARBUCK - The Starbuck community received some good news last week that its post office, which was in danger of being closed, will stay open.

But, this good news is mixed with bad news because the post offices in Prescott, Dixie and Starbuck will see their operating hours reduced.

Verna Foley, a Starbuck community member who runs Darver Tackle with Darcy Linklater, said she was thrilled to hear the news last Thursday that the small town's post office would stay open.

"I do everything through the post office," Foley said. "I don't trust the computer. We use it constantly."

And the news that Starbuck will keep its post office means Postmaster Diane Lusk isn't going anywhere.

"She's a good ol' girl," Foley said of Lusk. "I'm tickled pink about that."

Last summer, it was announced that Starbuck was on the list of thousands of rural post offices being considered for closure. The United States Postal Service is in dire straits budget-wise and it was looking to close smaller post offices that don't bring in as much revenue to save money. It lost more than $9 billion in 2011 and cut more than 10,000 jobs, according to Carol Rebstock, a United States Postal Service operations manager from the Spokane area.

Ernie Swanson, a representative for the postal service in Olympia, said instead of closing rural post offices, it will be cutting back on hours.

Swanson confirmed that in addition to reduced hours at the Starbuck Post office from eight to four hours a day, post offices in Prescott and Dixie will also be reduced by the same amount of hours.

"We're reducing hours because of the input we've been getting from customers," Swanson said. "So many people feel the post office is vital to their small community."

And that is precisely the message Starbuck residents gave USPS representatives last October at a town hall meeting on the closure. It felt as though the whole town turned out to that meeting at the Community Church last October to support Lusk and fight the closure of the town's post office. The main complaints about losing the post office were that Starbuck residents would have to drive to Dayton for post office services and that the community would lose a popular gathering place.

If the postal service had closed Starbuck's post office, the community would have still had access to a rural postal carrier or possibly had a village post office installed at a local business. Closing the office would not have cut the community off from the postal service, Swanson said.

"We were not going to give up on the people," he said.

By reducing hours at 13,700 post offices across the country, Swanson said the postal service will actually be saving more money, $500 million, compared to how much it would have saved by closing rural post offices.

And unfortunately, we don't yet have a clear picture of all of the effects of the hour reduction.

Swanson said he does not yet know the new hours of operation for the post offices in Starbuck, Dixie and Prescott.

Nor does he know if this means closing rural post offices is off the table forever.

The postal service is continuing to lose money and it is still seeking congressional funding to keep it in service.

Some solutions could be ending mail on Saturday and closing mail processing centers and those may still be on the table, he said.