Guest Column
William A. Cook
No. Brunswick resident addresses U.S. mail problems
I’ve had it with the U.S. Postal Service. Twice in the last several weeks, while the sun was shinning brightly and temperature was in the 50s, I didn’t even receive mail delivery. When I called the post office to find out the reason, the supervisor simply told me that the mail carrier was unable to finish the route due to darkness. This is nothing new; often in the summer months, I don’t receive mail delivery until after 6 p.m., and it is not uncommon for me to receive mail after 7 p.m.
So much for attempting to conduct personal business on a daily basis with banks, credit card companies that compute interest on your account daily, and other important documents. Does everything you send these days have to be expensive express mail to get there on time?
The U.S. Postal Service has become a totally incompetent and massive dinosaur of a service organization. As 2001 ended, we heard the postal service playing its usual blues guitar that it is facing millions in deficits and needs another rate hike in postage and bailout from Congress, i.e., the taxpayers.
You can write to members of Congress about this problem; I have. But they just don’t seem to care. To my knowledge no one ever got defeated for re-election because their constituents’ mail delivery was irregular.
Nonetheless, I say enough is enough of this continuous pouring of wasted tax money into the U.S. Postal Service and getting the same inept results. The U.S. Postal Service needs to be put out of its misery. It’s time for a massive change in the way the Postal Service is operated.
Therefore, I recommend that Congress outsource the Postal Service. Here is how my suggestion works, simplified, of course, for lack of space.
Divide the U.S. Postal Service into two regions — region one is east of the Mississippi River, and region two is west of the Mississippi. Then have the GAO (General Accounting Office) award two five-year contracts to the lowest responsible bidders to provide service in each of these regions for a fixed subsidy from Congress. If the outsourced providers don’t exceed their subsidies, they will make a profit.
After the contracts for both regions are awarded, the winning entities will have one year to develop their plans before implementing mail service. Meanwhile, we taxpayers can begin planning our goodbye celebrations for the termination date of the U.S. Postal Service.
When the contract goes into force, it will then be the responsibility of those entities winning the contracts for the mail delivery in each district to downsize the system accordingly, closing unnecessary facilities, such as unnecessary post offices and sorting facilities. Then it’s on to the mother lode of waste in cutting as much financial fat from the system as possible in reducing as many of the bloated number of executive, middle management and other jobs wherever possible. The contract services will also be responsible for recommending any new centralized facilities that may need to be built in order to handle the mail more cost effectively and efficiently.
To handle mail that crosses from one region to the other, I recommend that massive cross-country distribution and turnaround facility be built in Oklahoma City for example, that will be jointly run by the two outsourced providers.
Postal rates within a region will be reduced for a first-class letter to 30 cents. Postal rates for mail going from one region to the other will be raised to 40 cents for a first-class letter. All other mail, express mail, certified mail, etc., will have rates adjusted accordingly. Rates will be held firm for the life of the five-year contract.
Maybe there is a better plan; does anybody have any ideas? We have to do something, and that something is going to require innovative thought and a massive, radical change in the way the U.S. Postal Service currently conducts business. Otherwise, just keep up the hope that you will receive your mail tomorrow.
William A. Cook is a resident of North Brunswick