It is high time that our congressional representatives and leaders intervened in the unbelievable mess that is now occurring in our mail system. When I was growing up in Portland, we had mail delivery twice a day. It is a sad situation that these days, we are lucky if we get delivery twice a week.
Let me be clear. I do not believe that this is the fault of our mail carriers. From what I have seen and heard, it is the result of the mismanagement of the overall system. Although there could be many reasons why we are no longer getting the kind of service we have come to expect, after a close review of the things that have changed, one change in particular stands out. With no prior U.S. Postal Service experience, in May 2020, Louis DeJoy, owner of a logistics and freight company and longtime donor to various Republican candidates, including major donations to Donald Trump, was appointed U.S. postmaster general by the Board of Governors of the Postal Service.
Mr. DeJoy proceeded to make changes to supposedly run the postal system like a business, although as far as I know, the Postal Service was never intended to make a profit. Upon assuming office in June 2020, he instituted a 10-year plan for the USPS that eliminated overtime, banned late or additional trips to deliver mail, decommissioned hundreds of high-speed sorting machines and removed some mail collection boxes from streets. When they were announced, these changes were decried by the postal workers themselves.
In the less than three years since he assumed control, instead of improving mail processing and delivery, Mr. DeJoy has proceeded to almost singlehandedly destroy our Postal Service.
At my home in Saco, we had excellent mail delivery for years. Please understand that we do not live in a rural delivery service area. We live less than a mile from the post office in downtown Saco. However, over the past year, we have begun to experience very sporadic delivery of mail to our home mailbox.
At first, we would get no mail for one or two days at a time. As time has gone by, the situation has become progressively worse to the point that since November, we have sometimes seen up to a week at a time with no mail at all, only to receive a large batch of mail on one day. This has happened more than once to the point that we now have no confidence in this once-stellar service. Thank heavens my family is not dependent on mail delivery for life-saving prescriptions, as many others are.
I have spoken with friends across the state as well as elsewhere in the country, and I have heard similar stories. Mail delivery is just as important to all of us as police and fire protection and telephone and electrical service. We depend on these institutions and agencies. I am certain that if we had electricity distributed to our homes only one day a week, Congress would step in to do something about it. Why are there no active commissions looking into this terrible situation?
Make no mistake about it, this is both a state and a national crisis. Where are our elected officials as our confidence in this crumbling institution falters? We need action. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King, Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden, Gov. Mills and President Biden — please, we need your help!
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