The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

STARBUCK - More than 40 residents of Starbuck packed the small, dimly lit Community Church last Thursday to voice their concerns and disapproval of the postal service's study of whether to close the Starbuck Post Office.

"This is a study, it's not a done deal," said Carol Rebstock, a United States Postal Service operations manager from the Spokane area.

Rebstock and Doreen Karoly, from the Seattle office of USPS, hosted the meeting to let the residents of Starbuck know their options if the postal service does decide to shut down their post office.

"The postal service is facing severe financial difficulties," Rebstock said.

Because of the Internet and the recent recession, Rebstock said the postal service lost $9 billion this year. The service has cut 110,000 jobs nationwide. She said the service has tried to stay in the black by combining post offices in larger cities, will close 300 of the 500 mail processing centers across the county and is looking at closing many rural post offices. There are a couple of bills the service hopes pass that would reduce mail service to five-day delivery to save even more money.

"We do not use taxpayer dollars ever," she said. "Our mandate is to break even."

At this time, there are 36,000 rural post offices being considered for closure, Rebstock said.

Thursday was the start of a 60-day comment period on the possible closure of the Starbuck Post Office. During this time, the postal service staff members will be evaluated. They will look at how much workload there is for Postmaster Diane Lusk, how much revenue the post office makes and how much it would cost to add Starbuck to a Dayton rural carrier's route.

If the post office closes, there are two options. The preferred option would be to find a local business that can place sets of post office boxes outside the store and sell stamps and other mailing materials. Residents would be able to keep their post office box numbers.

"That's a great thing for a business," Rebstock said. "It brings in a lot of traffic."

Or, the citizens of Starbuck will forgo a box and have a rural carrier pick up and drop off mail, and sell stamps and boxes. In this scenario, mail would be delivered to the street address, and addresses of residents could change. Lusk would not lose her job, but the postal service would place her at a different post office.

The church was filled with tension as Rebstock explained the situation and the options. Starbuck residents said they were concerned for the security of packages left on their porches by rural mail carriers.

"It's just different," Rebstock said to the criticism. "It's something different you're not used to."

They didn't like the idea of just one post office left in the county, the one in Dayton, if the office in Starbuck closed. Also, they said the 25-mile drive to the Dayton post office can be too expensive for some residents in Starbuck to make because of the high price of gas. Also, some said they were worried about the safety of the new boxes that would sit outside, not in a secure building.

"It's possible to break into them, but it happens very infrequently," Rebstock said.

Gloria Josey, who moved to Starbuck three years ago from Issaquah, said the post office is important because her husband Conrad walks there every day. Also, it's a key place for socializing in the small town.

"It's that we're a lot of old people," Josey said. "We need our post office here."

One woman said the post office is the lifeline from the small community to the outside world. Through it they receive packages and letters from their friends and family members far away.

Karoly said if it does close, the Starbuck Post Office won't close anytime soon.

After this 60-day comment period, all of the information will be collected and sent to Washington, D.C., USPS headquarters, for a decision. Then if the community wants to appeal the decision, it can submit a petition within 30 days of the decision. The issue would then be evaluated by the postal regulatory commission, which has final say.

Those who wanted to submit a comment or start up a petition against the closure should contact Lusk at the post office.