Over the last few days, many of you should have received a letter from Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick outlining the ongoing dialogue between himself, state Representative Steve Malagari, myself, and the Lansdale Post Office about how we can improve service to all the communities that the Lansdale Post Office serves, after it became readily apparent that residents were unhappy with the speed, accuracy, and time of day delivery was occurring.
To date, there have been several meetings of this group to try and identify the source of this problem. Like so many issues, solving this is not as easy as it seems. As noted in previous musings, Lansdale’s mail issue is directly related to federal mandates that dictate the post office’s ability to recruit and keep talent. These mandates control everything from wages and benefits to the cost of stamps (which fully fund the post office) and, ultimately, impact a local post office’s ability to deliver the mail in a timely manner.
While some progress has been made, specifically related to accuracy of delivery and the time of day mail is delivered, this issue is far from over. To see that, you only must look at the date at the top of the Congressman’s letter and compare it to the date you received it in the mail. Personally, it was two weeks and one day to reach my home with a first-class stamp. I wish I could say that this was unusual and that more evidence would be needed to prove that mail is delayed and/or problematic in our community. However, residents have regularly shared their challenges with the post office with me and I have been keeping a log of these issues. So, I can say definitively that there is a true challenge that needs to be remedied, at a minimum, locally.
So, why bring it up now if this is a work in progress? As many of you might have heard, a new Postmaster General has been appointed and he has revealed his priorities which include items like eliminating overtime and slashing office hours. None of these “reforms” would fix the real issues we have with the post office and, in fact, they would very likely exacerbate the situation in our community. For example, Lansdale, like many other suburban communities, struggles with maintaining a full staff of mail delivery personnel due to inadequate pay and other hiring hinderances. This, in turn, requires large sections of the community to be delivered on overtime. Cutting overtime would only move residents from receiving late mail to not receiving mail at all.
While it would be easy to blame this issue on the pandemic, I can tell you that this issue pre-dates the pandemic by years and is not related to the pandemic in any substantive way other than it is has not made the delivery of mail any easier on our community.
Finally, this issue has come to the forefront at a critical time in our democracy. In a year where a large portion of the community will be voting by mail in order to ensure their voice is heard, while staying safe from COVID-19, we cannot continue to allow a key public service to continue to struggle to survive. We, as a community and as a nation, need a healthy, reliable, timely post office. To make that so we need to reexamine the constraints and limitations we have put on our post offices. For example, every position in the post office needs to be fully funded through retirement from the day someone starts on the job. That is a burden that no other federal organization must meet and the list of challenges the post office faces regarding proper staffing only goes on from there.
We need to fix this issue and we need to fix it soon. It is very unlikely that the challenges facing Lansdale will be resolved by the election. So, I only ask residents to make sure they send in their ballot as soon as they can. Vote as early as possible to ensure it is counted and your voice is heard in our democracy. Meanwhile, Congressman Fitzpatrick, Representative Malagari and I will continue to work diligently advocating for real reforms that will improve mail delivery in our community and hopefully resolve this issue once and for all.
See also:
Workforce Shortages, Poor Pay And Benefits Cited As Primary Concerns At Lansdale Post Office
Mayoral Musings: The Machinations of Mail Delivery
Lansdale Officials Discuss Ongoing Improvement of Mail Service
Mayoral Musings: Post Office Follow Up
Lansdale Enlists Congressional Help in Ongoing Postal Issues
