Will Sioux Falls Be Affected by Postal Service Cost-Cutting Plan?
Maybe it's just me, but I still do a double-take every time I see a U.S. Postal Service vehicle cruising the streets of Sioux Falls on a Sunday. Just seems odd to me. Even though the Postal Service has been doing certain types of deliveries on Sunday's for quite a while now.
The Postal Service has been forced to deliver Priority Mail packages and a variety of Amazon packages on Sunday's in larger cities and high-volume areas to remain competitive with other carriers.
This week, proposed cost-cutting changes were revealed for some areas of the country as part of a new strategy being rolled out by the U.S. Postal Service over the next 10-years.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy made the cost-cutting announcements on Tuesday (March 23).
According to Dakota News Now, the plan is designed to help stabilize the struggling agency. The new strategy includes a proposal to consolidate underused post offices, the possible implementation of a postage rate increase, along with a detailed investment plan for new delivery vehicles, among other things.
DeJoy say he expects the Postal Service to face $160 billion in losses over the next decade. Hence the reason he and other postal service executives are recommending the need to cut costs and modernize the agencies operations.
Dakota News Now reports, one of the biggest changes planned is to relax the current first-class letter delivery standard of one-to-three-days to a one-to-five-day benchmark.
DeJoy claims that change would only apply to mail going to the farthest reaches of the Postal Service network. Even if the proposed change goes into effect, DeJoy says mail carriers will still be delivering 70% of first-class mail within the three-day standard of time.
Sioux Falls has become large enough now, where I highly doubt we will see any of the proposed changes having a real effect on our mail delivery times. However, that may not be the case in some rural areas throughout the state.
The new Postal Service plan isn't widely popular with select politicians. Especially some Democrats, who feel it would undermine the mission of the agency. A number of Democrats want to see DeJoy removed from his position due to the lagging delivery times across the country that have happened under his watch as Postmaster General.
DeJoy was named the Postmaster General in June of 2020 during the Trump administration.
Source: Dakota News Now
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