4 local post offices could close

Paree Godsill, owner of the Unity Country Store, wasn’t happy to hear that the post office in the small town in southern Baker County is one of four in the county that might be closed late this year.

The three other rural offices on a U.S. Postal Service closure study list are at Durkee, Hereford and Oxbow.

The USPS released the list this week. More than 3,650 locations nationwide will be looked over.

“That would really put a damper on how we operate,” said Godsill, one of the new owners of the Unity Country Store, which also pumps fuel and offers overnight accommodations with a motel and recreational vehicle parking.

“We go to the post office a lot. There’s no mail delivered."

Unity residents pick up their mail from boxes at the post office.

Godsill said she relies on the post office to send and receive most checks as well as to send money orders and receive the magazines sold at the store, among other things.

The post office in Unity has 160 post office boxes and provides full walk-up services. The town’s first post office was established in the 1890s.

“We’re far out,” Godsill said. “And this is the only gas station for a long way.”

She couldn’t imagine having to travel to the post office in Baker City, Prairie City, or Vale for so many routine tasks. 

“It would be really devastating to Unity,” said Mark Bennett, who manages the city government, which has three part-time employees, according to Baker County.

The city’s population is about 110, but there are about 210 residents within Unity’s 97884 ZIP code, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Among Bennett’s concerns are “forcing seniors and others” to travel up to 50 miles to send or receive packages, deal with registered letters or simply “to sign for something.”

“In the winter, especially,” he said. “It’s going to put people at risk traveling.” 

Durkee’s post office also has a full-service walkup window. It has 124 boxes.

Unity and Durkee both are areas where Baker County officials would like to see economic development occur because both have room for industrial endeavors.

However, “it discourages someone from coming to a rural community when it doesn’t even have a post office,” Bennett said.

“A post office is also an informal communication center,” Bennett said. “It would be like cutting out part of the heart of a community.”

Postal officials emphasize that the list of offices is preliminary.

The agency will send letters to residents in each of the affected areas, and those people will have 60 days to comment, said Peter Hass, a USPS spokesman.

No offices will be closed before December of this year, he said.

As for what the USPS will do to accommodate people whose local post office closes, the answer will depend on each area’s circumstances, Hass said.

Some communities might end up with “village” post offices that would offer stamps, flat-rate packaging and other services. These service locations would be placed within local government offices or a business. These sites might contain post office boxes, Hass said.

In other cases, residents might have their post office boxes moved to the next nearest USPS office. In the case of Oxbow, that probably would be Halfway, about 17 miles to the west.

If the agency decides to close an office, customers could file an appeal with the Postal Regulatory Commission.

Hass said the Postal Service is considering closing offices because its mail volume has dropped by 20 percent over the past four years, resulting in a loss of revenue.

Increased use of the Internet is the prime culprit.

There were 38,000 post offices across the country a decade ago, compared with fewer than 32,000 now.