Local Mail Pickup Extinct

From Martha Groves of the Los Angeles Times:

If you're suddenly having trouble finding a neighborhood mailbox, you've got lots of company.

In recent weeks, one-quarter of the 3,700 collection boxes in the Los Angeles area have been removed, said Joseph L. Harrison, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service's Los Angeles district.
The purging of 930 boxes throughout the area, including in Beverly Hills, Inglewood, Santa Monica and neighboring communities, is part of a nationwide reduction prompted by government cutbacks and the shift to online bill-paying and e-mailing. Irate residents and business owners in Northridge, Cheviot Hills, Santa Monica and West Hollywood have complained to the office of U.S. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) about the loss of the familiar blue boxes, which many considered fixtures, like streetlights and telephone poles. . .

The number of mailboxes nationwide has dropped to 187,000 from about 204,000 in September 2007, said Don Smeraldi, a spokesman for the postal service's Pacific area, which includes California and Hawaii.

Spurring the removals has been a profound shift in how people communicate. E-mail and social networking Internet sites have contributed to steep declines in paper mail. The biggest reduction, Smeraldi said, has been in single-piece, first-class mail.

Complaints about mailbox removals have spread around the region, including Orange County and parts of Southeast L.A. In Lakewood three years ago, residents in one neighborhood successfully lobbied to get their blue box back, arguing that it was a community meeting place.

Jonathan Weiss, a Cheviot Hills resident, said he had filed under the federal Freedom of Information Act a request for information about the postal service's collection surveys conducted in his neighborhood. All five mailboxes closest to him, many used by elderly neighbors who still prefer paying bills by mail, were taken out, Weiss said."They removed every single one in my neighborhood, instead of taking out half of them," he said. "I think it makes no sense."

Do you like your neighborhood mailbox?

Do you see as it a vital part of America?

Do you use it?

Well, to hell with you!

The postal service doesn't care about you. They're out to give you less service at a higher and higher cost. And they'll make up any excuse or any type of story to "explain" what they're doing.

They're in charge and you'll learn to do it their way, or else.

The truth really doesn't matter to them. And neither do you!