There you were sitting in an entirely different ward and an entirely different zip code than the Kalorama Station post office. You listened as senior officials, including Washington, D.C. Postmaster Gerald A. Roane, explained why they were considering closing the facility you’ve used since 1985. You wondered how Roane and his team had decided to hold a “community meeting” outside the community — in Ward 3, zip code 20008, instead of the affected Ward 1, zip code 20009?
Roane claimed they had searched but couldn’t find a space near 18th and Kalorama Streets, where the station is located. You were incredulous, ticking off possible sites. D.C. Councilman Jim Graham made the same point — more politely than you, however. Roane subsequently agreed to work with the Ward 1 legislator to find an appropriate site in the community for a second meeting.
That brought no solace. Nor did it silence the crowd that had come to the Cleveland Park Library on a cold rainy evening to demand Roane and his folks leave the Kalorama Station alone. The audience also wanted them to find an alternate space for the T Street facility, which had lost its lease.
You demanded to know why stations like Temple Heights, Brightwood and Lamond Riggs previously slated for closure, were removed from the list. Donalda Moss, the District discontinuance coordinator, said, “I can’t tell you that. You have to wait until everything is public.”
Wasn’t everything already public?
Postal officials announced earlier this year their intention to close hundreds of facilities nationwide. They claimed the system had been hemorrhaging funds for years. Roane claimed it lost $5.2 billion in 2010.
Don’t blame Kalorama Station for that, you and others argued. That small, constantly understaffed facility is a moneymaker. Post officials know that. In fact, they reported Kalorama brought in $800,000 in 2010.
Everyone was even more confused: What manager in his right mind would close a low-cost, profitable facility?
When you asked whether postal managers had conducted any demographic studies, calculating the number of new residents expected to move into communities near the Kalorama Station and how many might be captured as customers, their faces went blank, as if you had begun speaking some foreign language. Moss eventually replied they weren’t looking at customers; they were looking at money.
The enormity of the postal system’s overall problem came into clearer focus days later. That was when Postmaster General Patrick R. Donohue announced closure of several processing centers nationwide. The move would end the system’s next day service, which would mean it could take two to three days for first class mail to be delivered. He said the move would save money.
That strategy came from the man who has lamented the loss of customers to the Internet. The solution Donohue and his crack management team has chosen to compete with the Internet wasn’t to accelerate but rather slow service delivery.
Donohue’s plan almost certainly would lead to further erosion of customers and greater financial loss. Talk about self-sabotage.
Jonetta Rose Barras’s column appears on Monday and Wednesday. She can be reached at [email protected].
