Boca seeks public’s input on downtown post office

An outcry about plans to relocate the services of a post office hasn’t happened in South Florida in recent years — until now.

The U.S. Postal Service kept about nine post offices from closing years ago across the tri-county area by readjusting its cost-cutting strategy. Instead of closing offices, it changed retail window hours in smaller places.

Now, the downtown Boca post office may be facing changes. At a meeting today, the Postal Service is inviting the public to discuss a proposal to move the downtown office’s retail services to another location. These are the services where the public goes for window transactions, such as mailing a package or certified letter.

Debra Fetterly, spokeswoman for the Postal Service, said the retail services still would remain somewhere downtown, ensuring that residents are not affected.

“We will always have a retail presence in the downtown area,” she said. “We realize that we’re important to the community as we should be.”

Some residents already have said they’d like to keep the retail services at the current site, 170 NE Second St.

Boca Raton Mayor Susan Haynie said the Postal Service is looking for a 4,000-square-foot site instead of the 8,500 feet at its current site, a 50-year-old building across the street from Mizner Park.

Fetterly said that under the proposal, the Postal Service would continue using the current downtown site for nonretail delivery services.

“Let’s hear what they have to say,” Haynie said of today’s meeting. It will take place at 4:30 p.m. at the Boca Raton Community Center, 150 Crawford Blvd.

From 2010 to 2014, the public grew concerned about the potential closure of thousands of smaller post offices across the country, said Steven Hutkins, a Radcliffe, N.Y., literature professor who taught place studies at the Gallatin School of New York University. Mostly retired, he keeps track of post office changes on his website, savethepostoffice.com

The Postal Service backed off closures after “there were so many protests and so many people complained,” he said.

By 2012, the Postal Service’s new strategy allowed it to keep smaller post offices open for business with modified hours. The Postal Service has adjusted to the new normal, with first-class mail down and demand for package shipping going up. There even have been openings in subsequent years. Hutkins recently wrote about a new post office opening in Watford City, N.D., population 6,390.

The Postal Service says the total mail volume was 149.5 billion last year, down from 159.8 billion in 2012.

Correspondence between households, the government and businesses has held up better than personal mail, “which was particularly hard-hit during the last 15 years,” according to a report released this month by the Office of Inspector General about the Postal Service.

But package shipping is on an upswing, rising from 3.5 billion five years ago to 5.7 billion last year. So, the Postal Service remains upbeat.

“Ongoing changes in the marketplace, including the rise of digital communication, means the world is constantly evolving and the Postal Service must adapt,” Fetterly said in a statement.

In Boca Raton, the downtown post office has served customers for decades. In 2009, Boca residents and city officials beat back a proposal to close it when it was listed among 13 post offices considered for closure in South Florida.

Responding to the latest relocation proposal, the Boca Raton City Council passed a resolution to keep its downtown post office open. John Gore, president of BocaBeautiful.org, a nonprofit, recently took out a full page ad in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, asking supporters of keeping the post office to show up to the meeting.

The Postal Service called today’s meeting as part of its protocol to seek input from the community. For 30 days after the public meeting, anyone may submit written comments to the Postal Service to this address: U.S. Postal Service c/o Damian Salazar, 7800 N. Stemmons Freeway, STE 400, Dallas, Texas 75247-4220.