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• Recently, the Postal Service backed away from plans to close up to 3,700 low-revenue post offices this month, citing community opposition. That is welcome news. South Dakota would have lost as many as 80 post offices.
• Closing rural post offices would have forced residents in sparsely populated areas to travel many miles farther to pick up or send mail and use other postal services.
• The Postal Service said it would reduce full-time staff and keep low-revenue post offices open for shorter hours with access to retail lobbies and post office boxes. No offices would be closed, but more than 13,000 post offices will have their operating hours reduced to two to six hours a day.
• The new strategy will require regulatory approval and the Postal Service will seek

community comment on the proposal, which could take several months. The USPS said its plan would be completed by 2014 and would save the agency $500 million a year.
• The Postal Service has been losing money but does not receive federal funding.
• Reducing the hours that low-revenue post offices are open is a better option for saving money than closing them, especially in rural areas of the country. In western South Dakota, closing many rural post

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