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Reply from Senator Baucus |
From John Williams
Recent news stories have me worried about the future of our small Montana towns and what the U.S. Postal Service may be doing to undermine life in these important and unique communities. Articles about the attempts to move the Red Lodge and Livingston post offices to the outskirts of town have brought to light the alarm with which residents view such moves. It's clear that people like having their post office in the heart of town. One common sentiment is that people in towns want to be able to walk to the post office and don't like being forced to drive out to the "Strip" to pick up their mail or buy a book of stamps. I understand that the citizens of Red Lodge have won their battle and will keep their P.O. Downtown. I don't know how things are going with Livingston.
Meanwhile, I have learned that the USPS intends to move other Montana post offices as well. The communities I've heard mentioned include Augusta, Plentywood, Three Forks, Bozeman, Eureka, Troy, Phillipsburg, Gardner, Absarokee, Joliet, West Glacier, Sweetgrass, Big Timber, Big Fork, Missoula. My concern is that USPS planing process will, once again, favor "edge-of-town" sites to the detriment of the communities they are supposed to serve.
Instead of leaving the citizens of Montana's communities to fight each and every siting battle independently, I think you should step in and help put a stop to this erosion of community life. Please help ensure that the Postal Service considers downtown sites as preferable locations for small town Montana post offices.
Highway-related "Big Box" retailers at the edges of our larger cities already present a serious danger to the ultimate commercial survival of Montana's small town businesses. The U.S. Postal Service should not work in tandem with the mega-retailers to systematically dismantle small town Montana life. That would indeed be an uncalculable loss for us all.