Turley Post Office Reducing Hours

Beginning Saturday, Nov. 11, 2006, the Federal Government's U.S. Post Office in Turley will be reducing its hours of service to the community. New hours for the office counter and contact with postal staff will be 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday. Availability to P.O. boxes will be 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

You might want to contact local officials to register concerns in the hopes that they don't try to shut down the office again, and especially contact U.S. Congressman John Sullivan about it since it is a federal issue. Go to http://sullivan.house.gov/contact.shtml and fill out a brief online contact form to send in to the Congressman about your concerns.

And stop by the Post Office and give some thanks to the postal employees, especially since they are having to deal with (you might have heard :) ) a new computer system that has slowed things down instead of sped them up. But if you do have to wait a while in line, and you sometimes do, it is one of the best and entertaining places to wait in line. I've waited in long lines at several post offices, and hands down this one is the best. Not much more to say than you have to experience it yourself.

Of course, so far, the mailboxes have remained out front of the Turley Postal Station and so you can still use them for mailing. Like all things, if you have a chance to use it here, do so.

They may be tempted to cut hours and service more here because of the size of the community, but let officials know that especially in communities where there isn't as ready access to computers and email among our neighbors, that it is even more important than ever that "snail mail" survive. And I don't want to be negative about it either; in my lifetime of experiences and running a national office, the postal service has been as good or better than private services 90 percent of the time. I still remember those other 10 percent times, but nobody's perfect....least of all me.