Loraine Post Office gets good news and shorter hours

Residents happy local post office will not close

LORAINE, ILLINOIS -- The United States Post Office is losing $25 millionevery day.

The United States Postal Service has been in decline since 2005. Increasing use of technology is forcing the service to make big changes to local offices.

The Loraine community was surveyed on what changes should be made.

"We're here in the Loraine Post Office today to explain the community that we're going to 4 hours a day here in this office," said Pamela Meehan,manager of Human Resources for the U.S. Postal Service. "Previously, the office was open for the window hours about 6.5 hours a day but part of the postal service restructure plan in order to remain viable is to take a look at our rural post office hours and reduce them where we can in an effort to save money,"

Eighty-six percentof the community voted to realign hours at the post office instead of visiting other offices or using delivery options.

"Well we're trying to remain viable the postal service is self-supporting and right now we're losing money. So one of the alternatives to closing small offices was we listen to community input, we listen to input of our management of our organization and we decided. To the greatest extent possible to keep these small offices open," Meehan said.

Loraine residents like Johnny Anderson,were happy to keep their post office open but also realized they would have to make some changes to keep it that way.

Anderson says, "I use it primarily as a business person to buy stamps, postcards, things we need to mail like that and mail letters; which, I was mailing at home because I'm on a rural route. I'll stop doing that and bring it to the post office here,"

Anderson also worried how he could cope with the shorter hours.

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Loraine Post Office gets good news and shorter hours