It’s happening again. According to the National News Association, the United States Postal Service, which has been handicapped by the forces of “cost cutting” and “efficiency” for a number of years now, is telling us that the USPS has filed a petition with the Postal Regulatory Commission that indicates that “if a newspaper is further than 50 miles from a new Regional Processing and Distribution Center, an additional day would likely be added to expected delivery times for any mail that entered into the newspaper’s local post office.”

This means that any mail dropped into a local mailbox or post office will be sent to the regional center in Denver before it gets sent back up here. Mail from Rollinsville to Nederland now already takes two to three days because of this; now it may take another day.

It’s annoying enough for us as individuals, but it’s devastating for us as a newspaper that depends on mail delivery to reach most of our subscribers. Events posted in the paper may be missed. Ads with deadlines will be made irrelevant. Interested in a house advertised in the paper, in our current market? You may be too late.

In general, this new “service standard” once again emphasizes that Americans who live outside our bustling cities are still second-class citizens as far as the USPS is concerned.

Under its current Postmaster General, the postal service has made a number of changes in “service standards” designed to “increase efficiency” that have done nothing but the opposite. Remember, a few years ago, when regional centers were consolidated, closing many and slowing down our service?

Meanwhile, the cost of mail – from the letters and packages you send, to the newspapers we send you – has been going up on a regular basis, drastically above the rate of inflation.

There has been an approach taken by some politicians assuming that the USPS is a business, and must make a profit in order to be “successful.” This approach is epitomized by our current Postmaster General, who also recently ordered hundreds of new fossil-fuel powered trucks because they are more “cost efficient” than the electric trucks that had been planned for.

But the Post Office is possibly the oldest service offered by this country. It is actually older than our country: it was founded by Benjamin Franklin and the Second Continental Congress in 1775. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the Constitution. It was never intended to be a business; it is a service, like police and fire departments. No one expects them to make a profit.

Perhaps the Postal Regulatory Commission will reject this petition, encouraging the USPS to improve its delivery times. More likely, the NNA states, “At some point, Congress has to step in to protect rural America.”