A full month has past since the Aripeka Post Office was CLOSED and those of us living on the Pasco County side of Aripeka remain without reasonable service from the USPS.
Those of us living in the affected area have friends and relatives who pay for postage to send us mail. They pay the full amount for the postage, but are not given the same service for their money as they would if they were mailing to friends or relatives almost anywhere else in the United States. Delivering our mail to an unwanted (even if it is free) PO Box seven miles away is just not the same as delivering our mail curbside. There are existing nearby rural carrier routes, but the USPS will neither add to an existing route nor make a new route for those affected in Aripeka. Just for the record, Aripeka is not in the middle of nowhere, we are located about a mile and a half west of US 19 (one of the busiest north/south highways on the west coast of Florida) on the Gulf of Mexico.
The closing of a neighborhood Post Office location would be traumatic in most cities and towns, but in Aripeka, it has been even harder to deal with because we do not receive curbside mail delivery to our homes. We relied on our local Post Office to receive our mail.
We are very sorry that the USPS has found itself in this sad state of financial distress, but closing a Post Office in a town that does not receive curbside delivery is unreasonable and unfair to the citizens of the community.
There are several Post Office locations in Spring Hill, Florida (just minutes from Aripeka). The Post Office at 7341 Spring Hill Drive and the location at 8501 Philatelic Drive are a mere 3.4 miles apart and yet they both remain open even in the dire financial straits the USPS has found itself in. Would it not make good financial sense to close the Spring Hill Drive location that appears to be a rental office and consolidate the two units? It would cause very little problem for anyone in the Spring Hill area as all of those citizens receive curbside delivery of their mail.
What it all comes down to is MONEY or the lack of it on the part of the USPS. It would have been less expensive for the USPS to deliver mail to those affected in Aripeka than to operate a Post Office, even with curtailed hours, but now it seems that the USPS will be able to save lots of money by just not servicing those affected at all. A free PO Box in Hudson costs them nothing, since these boxes were not being used in the first place.
Read this to see just how serious the USPS financial woes really are.
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