Wanna buy our post office?

When you move into a new neighborhood - a common selling point is being close to the public conveniences - park, school, library, post office. As Renton vies to be ahead of the curve, we may be endangering our original downtown area. I would say that the loss of our downtown post office constitutes as a step in that direction.

This recent scuttlebutt comes to me from a reliable source. The Downtown and Cascade branches of the post office are up for sale, with plans to create a center postal hub in the Highlands. Keep in mind that the brick building you see above, while not originally built as a post office, has been paid off for many years now and been serving the public for at least the last 50. Moving all the carriers up the hill will add an additional 45 minutes onto their work commute - that's extra mileage, so extra fuel costs, extra time for the carriers, so overtime - and a longer commute to just begin the day for many carriers. Oh fun. Now, how is this going to cut costs?

Our downtown post office is always in use - hard to find it when there isn't a line ( they in fact don't have enough staff to man the place), and provides P.O. boxes for many in the area, besides all of the basics services that we rely upon. In a day and age when "snail mail" is not used as often as it was in yesteryear, we still all have a need to send packages, buy stamps and pick up our mail.

I personally walk every week to the post office - I know of many others who do as well. God forbid if you don't have a car or the means to hike it up to the Highlands. I am not sure how that is going to work out for so many people that I know. Elderly people, people who don't drive, people who believe that a "downtown" means having a post office. In some towns in the Midwest, having a post office made you a town.

Apparently, we don't have much say in this matter. Sort of a done deal. Hear tell they went through something similar down Tacoma way and the citizens petitioned and had their say to keep the post office where it was - right in the heart of a community that still needs its services and wants to keep the beat of the unique community we still have (for now) strong.