Darrell Issa’s Proposal Would Stop Daily Mail Delivery To Millions Of Americans
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, headed by Congressman Darrell Issa, is pushing a proposal that wold result in millions of Americans no longer getting mail delivered daily to their homes. During the next decade 15 million addresses would receive mail at curbside or communal locations.
“I think it’s a lousy idea,” said Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts. He was joined by some other lawmakers in saying it wouldn’t work in urban areas where there’s no place on city streets to put banks of so-called “cluster boxes” that have compartments for multiple homes. Under the proposal, waivers could be given to people with disabilities who have difficulty leaving their homes, and people who still want door delivery could pay extra for it — something Lynch derided as “a delivery tax.”..
Converting to communal or curbside delivery would save $2 billion annually, Issa said, quoting from estimates that door delivery costs $380 annually per address compared to $240 for curbside and $170 for centralized methods. He said less than 1 percent of all addresses nationwide would undergo a delivery change annually and that communal boxes offer a safe, locked location for packages, doing away with the need for carriers to leave packages on porches and subject to theft and bad weather.
fahvel May 21st, 2014 at 4:43 pm
what has the cost been for all the blsht that issa has dragged the people through?
granpa.usthai May 21st, 2014 at 5:02 pm
no actual tally, fahvel, but Issa does have a good ‘screen sitting’ if any movie producer needs a part where an actor appears to be leaving a meeting in pretended disgust. Howbeit, I’ll wager that Tray Gowdy will be an upcoming challenger for the play.
granpa.usthai May 21st, 2014 at 4:58 pm
at least he has enough faith in the American people to realize no one would actually attack an elderly person hobbling home in a walker with their packages being shuffled along in front of them during a storm.
Bruce Gerencser May 21st, 2014 at 5:01 pm
Some of us have lived with this for years. We live in a small community where we have to go to the post office to get our mail. The post office is closed every day for 2 1/2 hours for lunch. 12-2:30 p.m. Getting our mail this way has turned ordering things online into a nightmare. Since we have a box number rather than a street address, our address does not show up in the address validators many online companies use. Either they refuse our order or have to call them. Get a credit card online? Almost impossible.
I love living in rural, small town Ohio but I hate how the nail is handled. Issa’s proposal would only make things worse.
Hardlee_Ded May 22nd, 2014 at 12:29 am
I’m lucky… we just have all 36 boxes for the small community I live in one place and carriers will deliver our on-line orders to the door.
JimmiJames May 21st, 2014 at 5:32 pm
The USPS could solve their problems overnight doing 2 things. 1. Make their full time jobs a 40 hr. work week (no mandatory overtime pay as it is now). 2. Eliminate their ridiculous antiquated “casing” in the a.m. Leave that to the automated sorting facilities. Casing alone is wasted hours…(probably 40 hrs a month per carrier). Their Union is the real problem!
arc99 May 21st, 2014 at 5:44 pm
the $2billion annual savings from Rep. Issa’s proposal is what the Pentagon spends in 2-3 days. unions are not the problem.
as President Eisenhower warned us, the military industrial complex is the problem
Les Finesse May 24th, 2014 at 9:22 am
Nonsense, there is very little a.m. casing, it’s already being done as you suggest. The PO’s financial problem is because of mandated pre-funding of retirement benefits 75 years out. They are funding the retirement of workers who aren’t even born yet. Guess where that came from.
The neighborhood cluster box is already in wide use. Almost all new developments, residential and industrial, have them. It’s the changing of existing delivery systems that creates the problem. Many postmasters have tried unilaterally to change from house delivery to curbside or clusters, most have been made to return to house delivery.
The only way this could work is when a property changes ownership, they then must convert to curbside or cluster, or get the appropriate waiver. All full time jobs are 40 hours per week. OT Pay is a negotiated item and very likely will never be lost. Usually, it is improper staffing by incompetent managers that cause the need of overtime.
Odd, when I worked for the postal service, the mail was manually sorted, arrived at the carrier’s case by 6.a.m., they were out the door by 8. Back by 1 or 1:30 and out at 2. Every time automation was entered into an operation, the mail came later, hence delivered later. The conversion to automation, again, by incompetent managers, has been a huge financial boondoggle. They can’t pay enough to get good managers, yet they keep adding to the number of managers while the number of employees who actually move the mail has steadily declined in the past 10-15 years.
FanOfTravel May 21st, 2014 at 7:24 pm
Here’s a tip darrell “grand thief auto” issa….I was a letter carrier for 28 years,retiring in 2007. The Post Office has one manager for every 8 employee’s,while UPS has on manager per every 22 employee’s. The waste I saw was embarrassing and if an employee went public about any of the wasteful practices you could lose your job. One time we were told that a local tv station would be out in our zip code and if we were approached and asked questions,we were instructed to not answer any questions and refer them to our station manager.
Hardlee_Ded May 22nd, 2014 at 12:21 am
…OK, I already do, so do a lot of other people. But who’s going to pay to set this up for everybody else.
Tor Buck May 23rd, 2014 at 10:36 am
This stupid idea would also put numerous postmen out of work! What an ASS!
fahvel May 23rd, 2014 at 2:59 pm
well as long as every congress person has their mail delivered to a big cluster box in front of the capital down on the sidewalk of course – put issas way up hi so he has to stretch something since his mind is shrunken.