ADDISON COUNTY — Recent changes to the U.S. Postal Service will be delaying delivery for most mail by up to a full day, according to information conveyed to the Addison Independent this week by local postal officials. They said the U.S. Postal Service had reduced the number of delivery times from two a day to just one: at 7 a.m.

According to a VTDigger story on Jan. 26, “Vermont is the latest region to join Regional Transportation Optimization, a new strategy that ends evening (or afternoon) collection of mail that’s more than 50 miles away from regional mail centers.”

Regional Transportation Optimization is one part of a years-long strategy of service cuts and other changes that began in 2021 under former Postmaster Louis DeJoy, who was appointed by President Trump during his first term and has been making substantial cuts to the agency ever since. After much criticism, DeJoy left the post last year and has been replaced by the newly appointed Postmaster General David Steiner.

“The postal service has said the plan is essential for making its operations efficient and financially self-sustaining,” read the VTDigger story, adding that “critics of the program say there’s been a lack of transparency in how the plan could affect the speed and quality of service throughout the country.”

VTDigger quoted Steve Hutkins, an advocate who runs the Save the Post Office website, saying there had been “no signs at post offices or other notices to customers letting them know that their mail will be sitting at the back of the post office overnight…. ‘The Postal Service doesn’t want the public to pay any attention to this change in its transportation policies and the slower service standards (delivery times) that the change is causing,’ Hutkins said via email.”

The change for first-class mail means that the USPS has shifted many parts of Vermont from a two-day service standard to a three-day service standard, and it can take up to five days to reach other parts of the country.

There are some exceptions, Hutkins said. Local mail in places close to Vermont’s two Local Processing Centers, located in Burlington and White River Junction, could still go to those facilities and be processed more quickly than mail going to Springfield, Mass.

To keep delivering its weekly print edition to all county subscribers each Friday (the same day it currently arrives) the Addison Independent staff will deliver the newspaper in walk-sorted sequence to as many local post offices within Addison County as possible, in cooperation with local post offices.

“It will definitely cost us more money to make those deliveries,” said Addison Independent publisher Angelo Lynn, “but in light of more cuts to the Post Office, and knowing how important it is for subscribers to get the news by that Friday, we’ll do what we can to make that possible.”

Lynn added that because the newspaper had no warning of the changes, the newspaper hopes its delivery to local post offices will be well received, but noted it was not able to connect with every county post office by phone or email as of this Wednesday.