Barnard Post Office Discontinuance Study

The following documents are what I received in the mail the other day.  Click on each document to make it larger.

There are a few loaded questions in it that seem designed to prove that we could do without our post office.  Answer it carefully.

The postal service is hosting a meeting at the community building to discuss the closure of the Barnard post office.  It is Monday, October 3, 2011 at 7 pm.  I plan to be there.

Simpson recently had a similar meeting.  The postal service advocated that towns could have a village post office in a local business.  The postal service representative said that the addresses would not change and the zip code would remain.  The article said that the 138 day process of closing the Simpson post office began when the meeting was set.  THAT MEANS THAT THE PROCESS HAS STARTED FOR CLOSING THE BARNARD POST OFFICE!!!  OUR TIME IS OFFICIALLY RUNNING OUT!  The appeal process is listed in the above documents.  The article about Simpson is in the September 23 issue of the Beloit Call.

The residents had some great questions that they asked.  Based on those questions, here is what I plan to ask at the meeting.

1.  If the Barnard service area goes to rural delivery, would they have to add personnel?  If they had to add personnel, why could they not continue to pay our postmaster?

2.  As in Simpson the building is not owned by the Postal Service.  The Postal Service said that it will fulfill the lease term.  Will the service do the same here?  When does that contract expire?  If you have to pay for the building anyway, why not keep the post office operative?

3.  The nearest post offices are 15-30 miles away.  Our population is aging and some have limited driving abilities.  How will they get to the post office?  How will we get to the post offices to get our registered mail or things we must sign for?

4.  If you leave our packages in unsecured areas, how can we be assured of getting them?

5.  We have no suitable businesses in town to provide a village post office.  How can we open a village post office?

If our post office closes, several people have voiced concern about whether or not they would stay in Barnard.  Council member Randy Pickering said in a council meeting that if the post office closed, he and Crystal were definitely leaving.  I believe that others may do the same.  This may be a hard blow for our community to survive.  This is the time that you should stand up and be counted.  If we lose our post office, it shouldn't be because we didn't try.