FREEHOLD — Borough officials are gearing up for the effort it will take to keep a postal facility in town.
One step municipal officials have taken is to reach out to Congressman Christopher Smith (R-N.J.), whose district includes Freehold Borough.
A member of Smith’s staff told the News Transcript this week that the congressman is examining the issue.
Freehold Borough has been served for seven years by a United States Postal Service (USPS) trailer that was placed in a Monmouth County parking lot on Lafayette Street behind the Monmouth County Hall of Records. All postal services are available at that trailer.
USPS officials have acknowledged in the past two weeks that they may be looking to remove that trailer and to consolidate services for Freehold Borough and Freehold Township in the post office at the Raintree shopping center, Route 537, Freehold Township.
Speaking at the Feb. 17 meeting of the Borough Council, Mayor Michael Wilson said he has reached out to Smith for assistance in keeping the postal office open in the borough.
He said the town has “seen this fight before.”
“We’ve got to win this one again. To have a county seat without a post office is asinine,” the mayor said, referring to the fact that Freehold Borough is the county seat of Monmouth County.
Officials passed a resolution on Feb. 17 supporting the continuation of the Freehold Borough postal facility. All of the council members voiced their strong opposition to the removal of that service. The resolution states that the closure of the postal unit would “present a major inconvenience to local residents, businesses, senior citizens, the municipal and county governments and their employees.”
The resolution states that the action will create a hardship for residents who will find it difficult to reach the post office in Freehold Township. It states that the trailer which houses the postal unit is “cost-effectively managed” and requires no real rent or lease payment for operation since Monmouth County provides the land to accommodate the trailer.
Jeff Sagnip, a spokesman for Smith, said the congressman was not happy to hear about the possible closure of the postal facility in Freehold Borough.
“The congressman has reached out to post office officials and requested a meeting where he will present the downside of closing the post office to residents and business in the bor- ough,” Sagnip said.
He said that meeting should take place within the next few weeks.
“The congressman feels it is not right to eliminate something the town sorely needs. He will stay on top of this,” the spokesman said. Sagnip said the possible closure of Freehold Borough’s post office trailer caused Smith to be alarmed because the congressman noted that it would be unprecedented for a municipality that is a county seat not to have a post office.
“Every one of our county seats in all 21 counties has a post office,” he said. “Out of all 21 counties, eight municipalities are even smaller than Freehold Borough and still maintain post offices. It was a good decision seven years ago to put the trailer there. It was the right thing to do.”
Sagnip said once a post office closes in a town, it rarely reopens. He acknowledged that the Raintree post office is about 2 miles from Freehold Borough and that consolidating the two post offices would bring added traffic to an already congested shopping center.
Darlene Reid, a spokeswoman for the USPS, said although no decision has been made yet to close the Freehold Borough postal trailer, postal officials have been mandated by the U.S. Postmaster General to “efficiently streamline operations and cut costs where they can.”
“We are trying to manage our costs,” she said. “The post office fell an unprecedented 9.5 billion pieces of mail last year. We had a $2.8 billion net operating loss last year.”
Reid said locally, mail service has dropped 12.2 percent in Freehold.
“Many people do not realize that (the USPS) is a self-supporting agency. There have been no tax dollars since 1970. It all comes from our postal sales,” she said.
Reid said Leonard Oaks, the postmaster of the Freehold Township post office, has “put out a call to action to manage this problem.”
“That trailer (on Lafayette Street) was only meant to be a temporary structure. It was never meant to be permanent,” she said. “It presents an opportunity to save some costs. We are collecting data on transactions and customer traffic, as well as the cost of transporting the mail back and forth” between the Freehold Township and Freehold Borough facilities.
Reid said district manager Priscilla Maney will be reaching out to local officials for a proactive meeting to discuss the issue.
“It’s these tough economic times,” the spokeswoman said. “It is affecting everything”
The postal trailer in Freehold Borough provides 780 post office boxes. Reid said 417 of the boxes are rented at the present time. If the Freehold Borough postal trailer closes, the Raintree facility will accommodate those 417 customers.
At a meeting on Feb. 10, the Township Committee in Freehold Township passed a resolution supporting the continued operation of Freehold Borough’s postal facility.

