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GALT – For residents of tiny Galt in Sterling Township, the local post office is a place to receive and mail letters, send packages to loved ones, and stop to have a friendly conversation.
Victoria Siperly, 66, has lived there for 30 years, and uses the post office on Galt Road “all the time.”
“I write quite a few letters,” she said. “My family is all over. I have granddaughters in Utah.
“My husband always kids me, ‘I would pay for him to build a new one,’” if the Galt post office ever were to close.
That remains to be seen.
As many as 2,000 post offices will be closed by the U.S. Postal Service in a cost-saving move. The process begins next month when facilities to be closed are announced.
Jose Aguilar, customer relations coordinator for the USPS Central Illinois District, said there’s no list yet. The district still awaits information from headquarters about how to begin the review process.
“Closing is one possibility, amended hours are another,” Aguilar said. “No one thing has been set at headquarters.”
Siperly said it would be “really inconvenient” if the Galt post office were to close.
She picks up mail from a box at the office, about three blocks from her home. The next nearest post office is about 5 miles away, in Sterling.
Fellow Galt resident Ken Wolf also relies on the local post office to receive his mail. He works at Astec Mobile Screens as an assembler.
“It’s convenient for us here,” he said. “We don’t have to run in to town. I do use it for mailing packages.”
Wolf said the post office provides personalized service, he said, especially to residents of a small community.
How a post office is closed
Smaller post offices such as the one in Galt won’t necessarily be on the closure list.
In fact, there are 52 steps and many factors involved in closing an office, said Mark Reynolds, a spokesman for the Chicago district Postal Service.
Factors include how much postal access is available in a community, proximity to other locations, and alternate post methods.
“If there are facilities so close to each other that there is a way we can consolidate service without extracting from service, we would have to consider that,” Reynolds said.
It is illegal to close a post office simply because they don’t make money, Reynolds said. Post offices can only be closed for maintenance problems, lease expirations, or other causes that don’t have to do with profitability.
Reynolds said the Postal Service is working with Congress and the Obama administration to have “a little more flexibility.”
The future is here
A push by ComEd and other companies to “go green” has persuaded many people to pay bills online, without paper and stamps.
As more and more postal business is being done online, less first class mail is being sent. The Postal Service is being forced to adapt to more electronic means of doing business.
“Everything from purchasing online postage to some products that get a reduced rate,” Aguilar said.” There is free delivery confirmation if you use online services. A carrier can pick it up the next day.
“There is not the need to go to the local post office to mail packages.”
Meanwhile, there has been a “sharp increase in package service,” Aguilar said.
“Maybe the direction that the Postal Service is going may change how we provide service to customers,” he said.
“We had to take a look at staffing, equipment, the size of buildings and so forth,” he said.
“We reach every single household and every single business every delivery day, that’s been unequaled at this point,” Aguilar said. “It’s been part of Americana that individuals can expect a letter carrier, rural or city, comes to their home 6 days a week unless there is a holiday.”
Business as usual
On a sunny but deceptively cold Thursday afternoon, the Sterling Post Office on Third Avenue was bustling with customers.
Alderwoman Retha Elston was mailing Valentine’s treats to her college-age children and their significant others.
She said she visits the location two to three times a week. If the post office were to close, Elston said it would “greatly affect” her life.
“I buy stamps, I mail packages to college kids and foreign exchange students,” she said. “This is more personal. It’s a personal gift that I picked out and a card that I made.
“I would like them to have something special because they are away from home.”
Andrea Brickman, who works for Kurtz Glass Company in Rock Falls, was taking care of business mailings. She sends checks and contracts through the mail for work.
Brickman, of Sterling, said she visits the Sterling Post Office three times a week – something she’d miss if the facility were to close.
“There is some stuff you just can’t do through the Internet,” she said. “You need original signatures and things like that, especially on contracts, you just can’t send through the Internet.”