Residents of Portland and Eugene were alarmed this week to see some U.S. Postal Service mailboxes removed from neighborhood streets and hauled away in flatbed trucks.
The sight of mailboxes being carted off caused concern in light of recent comments by President Donald Trump about cutting Postal Service funding. Trump has also criticized voting by mail.
But a Postal Service spokesperson said declining mail volume means the Postal Service is removing “duplicate” boxes from areas that have multiple collection boxes. The USPS confirmed that four mailboxes were removed in Portland this week.
“First-class mail volume has declined significantly in the U.S., especially since the pandemic,” Ernie Swanson, a spokesman for the USPS, told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “That translates to less mail in collection boxes.”
Swanson said other facets of service will remain the same, such as pickup times and processing.
“It shouldn’t affect people at all,” he said.
Another Postal Service spokesperson, David Rupert, said some of the mailboxes were also removed and replaced with higher-security boxes.
Rupert said the Postal Service was not commenting on the remarks the president has made about blocking funding to the agency.
But some Oregon residents said they were concerned that the changes were another step to limit their access to mail.
“Outbound slots in neighborhood mailboxes are being locked shut,” Jacob Strouckel, a Eugene resident, told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an email. “We are not just losing access to roadside mail dropboxes, but our convenient neighborhood drop slots. This applies to neighborhoods without individual mailboxes, so we are unable to send outbound mail from our area, without finding a roadside mailbox or risking a trip to the post office.”
On Thursday, the Washington Post reported that Trump said he doesn’t want to fund the postal service because Democrats are trying to expand vote-by-mail services during the pandemic.
He said at a Wednesday briefing that he would not approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the postal service, or $3.5 billion in supplemental funding for election resources, according to the Post.
Other recent changes to the postal service have also raised concern among residents, including new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor who has no background working in the postal service. DeJoy has eliminated overtime for hundreds of thousands of postal employees, according to USA Today, and has mandated that mail be held if distribution centers are understaffed or running behind.
—Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR
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