Sonic owners have no intention of opening a drive-in in Neosho Falls, or any of many other small towns that dot the Kansas landscape.
Population density and traffic volume are too sparse to make one profitable.
Same may be said for post offices in Neosho Falls, or Piqua, or Kincaid, or Welda. But that hasn’t deterred the Postal Service from maintaining outlets in those towns long past when patronage wasn’t sufficient to pay the bills.
Recognition for the Neosho Falls post office’s fall from financial grace came some years ago when daily delivery became the ward of a rural carrier operating from Yates Center. Hours were cut to a couple each day and boxes where mail is retrieved dwindled to a handful.
Same story in a multitude of other small towns, such as Piqua where an Iola rural
carrier delivers.
Schools and post offices give a town identity. Unfortunately, reality is that can’t be the overriding consideration.
The Kansas Legislature shuttered many small-town schools with a round of unification in the 1960s and, for the same reason that little-used post offices are on the chopping block, state finances may force another round of school consolidation before many more years.
Post office closings are agonizing for those who still depend on them and slow in coming because of the way
bureaucracy works.
A study released by Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe in late July identified 3,700 potential closings across the nation and predicted that reducing service everywhere to five days a week could save $20 billion by 2015.
Should the ax fall?
Pragmatism says “yes.” Emotion, in many quarters, takes an opposite view.
But, in today’s financial environment that anyone not comatose surely understands, the decision is starkly evident.
It seems just a matter of time, which may quicken if the economy doesn’t soon reverse course.
— Bob Johnson
