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PARK VALLEY -- Park Valley isn't the smallest town in Utah. But it sure feels like it.
Cows here outnumber people. The little convenience store closed a long time ago. And the clock tower is stuck in the past.
But, Park Valley's sense of community is as big as the surrounding mountains. So when the community heard a few months ago that they might lose their post office, they were upset.
"It really made me feel bad when I saw we were on the list," said Brent Rose.
Brent Rose is a rancher and has been in this part of Box Elder County his whole life. Remoteness is nothing new to him, but when he heard his hometown might lose its post office he about lost it.
"I guess partly is our identity. I don't think I have to tell anybody how important a post office is," Rose said.
This little building is their connection to the outside world. Sure, it doesn't get a lot of business, but it does bring a sense of community.
"To me, there are three central parts to a community," said Principal Brian Anderson of Park Valley School. "There's the school, there's the church, and there's the post office."
For the Postal Service, though, times are tough and operating such a low-traffic post office might not make economic sense any more. That's why it's one of 15 in Utah that could soon be closed for good.
"To lose it, it's a travesty for us, I think," Rose said.
"If you take that away, you lose part of your community. It kind of kills your community," Anderson said.
Mail will still be delivered to residents, but to a collection box or something like it. To actually visit a post office to buy stamps or do business will mean a roughly 40-mile drive one-way to the next closest post office in Snowville.
"If you have something important to pick up, that makes it fairly inconvenient," Anderson said.
The Postal Service knows it will be inconvenient but so is all the money they're losing. The Postmaster General says they must reduce $20 billion in costs by 2015 to be profitable. Just this past fiscal year, the Postal Service operated at a roughly $8.5 billion loss. If nothing is done to cut costs, that could turn into $238 billion by 2020.
In the past 10 years, First Class Mail nationwide has gone from 103 billion pieces in 2001 to 78-billion pieces last year.
Robert Vunder, a manager with the Postal Service out of Salt Lake City, says that loss is because of the Internet.
"We're looking at every possible dollar that we spend in order to capture that back, because that volume is not coming back," Vunder said.
To me, there are three central parts to a community. There's the school, there's the church, and there's the post office.
–- Brian Anderson, principal
But the largest drain on the Postal Service's budget is the retiree health benefit prepayment requirement which Congress passed in 2006. It costs about $5.5 billion a year. The Postal Service is asking Congress for help in changing how and when it pays out those benefits.
"We need their help in order to make some structural changes," Vunder said.
Another city, Hanksville, will see their Post Office close, too.
Steven Hatch sells lots of items on Ebay from his rock shop in Hanksville. For his family, the little bit of extra money makes a big difference.
"Especially in these trying times we have in our economy, this is kind of what keeps food on the table so to speak, you know?" Hatch said.
He said the post office is the cheapest and easiest way to ship items, but if the one in Hanksville is closed, it's a 57-mile drive one-way to Green River, the next closest Post Office. He wonders why rural Post Offices seem to be high on the possible closure list.
"In the urban areas, you have Post Offices that are fairly close together," Hatch said. "I mean, we'd hate to inconvenience anybody by having them go three more blocks to another post office, but good heavens, we're talking 110 miles roundtrip to mail a letter."
If some of these rural Post Offices do close, the Postal Service has talked about opening sites in gas stations or grocery stores, so the residents in some of those communities affected will still have post service, but folks in some of these communities say that's just not going to work.
Nathan Maire owns Blondies in Hanksville. Money made from selling all those world famous burgers and shakes gets turned into money orders at the post office so it can be mailed to a credit union in Salt Lake. There are no banks in Hanksville and Maire worries about sending cash with someone who would do Hanksville's deliveries.
"What would you like me to do? Just send $10,000 in cash with them and hope it gets there?" Maire said.
Unlike Hanksville, in Park Valley, there aren't any businesses to even set up a small station.
"And it would be a good thing to partner with somebody, I believe. But there's just not that ability here," Anderson said.
"And see, that's the toughest situation, is that in a lot of these communities, the only place of meeting is the post office," Vunder said.
Still, tough choices have to be made. The Postal Service is in financial trouble -- everyone we spoke to understands that -- they just don't think closing rural post offices and hurting a community's identity is the right way to go.
The United Stated Postal Service are expected to come to a decision by February as to which post offices will close.
Email:acabrero@ksl.com.
