Humbird (WQOW) - It's symbol of small town America: in every village, town and
community, there are typically a few bars, a church, and a post office. But
those days are quickly becoming a thing of the past. The post office is losing
money, quickly, and now they need to come up with ways to right the ship. A
meeting in Humbird took place Thursday night, where the postal service is
planning on cutting hours.
"I mean it's just, I really enjoy it, it seems
like a hometown to me," says Vicky Adams, a business owner in Humbird.
It's a blink and you miss it kind of
place.
"It's a nice little
town, if it would just stay," says Humbird resident Pat Gerber.
On the main drag of Humbird, just
off Highway 12 in Clark
County, you'll find two
bars, and a post office.
"I've had people
from Milwaukee that stop in and compliment on
how cute it was and it's a nice post office, and it's handy, and we need it," Adams says.
But the doors to that post office
won't be open as long. As part of a plan to cut costs by the U.S. Postal Service,
they're trimming the hours from eight a day, down to just two.
"We're losing 16
billion dollars at the end of the year," says Tracy Francine, with the United
States Postal Service.
"It won't be long and we
won't have anything left," says Gerber.
The gas station closed down last
year, and the bank closed down a number of years back.
"When you stop and
think of all of the different things we have lost in town, it makes a
difference," says Gerber.
This branch is just one of 13,000
post offices across the U.S.
that will be facing shorter hours.
And for Humbird, Thursday night's Postal Service meeting was nothing new.
"Humbird is a very
unique office in the fact that about a year and a half ago, we were here
talking about discontinuing the office. you guys were this close to closing, as
close as you could get," says Francine.
Many say they're glad the one-room
post office will remain open, but with all the changes the 300 plus community
members have seen over the past years, they remain cautious.
"How much more can
they take from us?" asks Adams.
Of the 106
post offices in the zip codes starting with 547 and 548, 61 of them will be
reducing hours under the postal services plan. The general manager of those
post offices says changes in hours will not happen until next year, sometime
around February or March.
