City Working to Save Main Street Post Office

 City government, both Democrats and Republicans, are working together to save Danbury’s Main Street Post Office.

The City Council will consider a resolution Tuesday to bring the state’s senators and representatives in Washington D.C., into the struggle. Danbury Mayor started that process Thursday with a letter to U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy, and U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Joseph Lieberman.

“We want a U.S. Post Office of some configuration on Main Street,” said City Council Member Tom Saadi, who started working on this issue in 2010 when he heard the office might close then.

“As your own letterhead demonstrates, the internet continues to shape the way that America uses its mailbox,” wrote Philip M. Gioia, Danbury’s Post Master to Saadi in October, 2010.  “The Postal Service faces significant losses in mail volume and revenue.”

The Main Street post office is nearly 100 years old, and the Postal Service has been downsizing and eliminating offices nationwide for years because it has lost so much business to national and international shipping firms and to the Internet. The issue arises in Danbury, because the U.S. Postal Service moved most of its sorting and distribution to the newer post office on Backus Avenue in 1985. That office includes 24-hour shipping machines and stamp access.

The office on Main Street serves downtown merchants and residents with post office boxes, stamps and other services.

Gioia, the post master, wrote in his response to Saadi that people can buy stamps at no additional cost at Wells Fargo, Waldbaum’s CVS, A&P, and Stop and Shop, all in or near Main Street.

“By design, these are common, convenient destinations for Danbury residents,” Gioia wrote.

The City Council will consider a resolution Tuesday to petition the federal and state government to keep the office on Main Street open.

“There is no question the Post Office is under a lot of financial pressure. We all are,” Boughton said. “We need a post office on Main Street. If Hawleyville can keep its post office, Danbury can keep a Main Street post office.”

Both Saadi and Boughton said a post office doesn’t have to be in a 100-year-old building, and it might work in a store-front with U.S. Postal workers running it and offering a more complete list of services than just stamps.