an open letter

May 12, 2011

Dear Decision Maker:

We strongly oppose the closure of the Old Chatham NY Post Office!

We depend on the services at the Old Chatham Post Office, as we maintain a small business selling items on ebay and etsy.  We depend on our Post Office for not only rural delivery of our personal and business mail, but also to accept our metered mail packages.  For economy, we often walk our packages to the Post Office, which allows use to save fuel costs, as well as another way to connect to our community.

The Post Office is often where we meet out neighbors.  As parents of two small children, we connect to our community through our walks to the hamlet.  We have met and kept our friends on those walks!  The Post Office maintains the ONLY community bulletin board for local announcements (like when the bear is first sited in town so we can take our bird feeders down) Announcements are also responsible for returning lost pets and items to their owners.  The bulletin Board is also a place for small business owners to connect to Old Chatham.

If our Post Office is closed it will be a financial and social burden to our personal and our community’s economy.  If we must go to further post offices, we must burn gas to do so, we will lose our community identity and address, and we lose a little more of our history.

Please consider helping us maintain the community so many of us have moved here to find, by KEEPING our Post Office open!

Thank you for your consideration and assistance,