Not Renew­ing Lease For Water­gate Post Office

The fol­low­ing was writ­ten by for­mer FBA pres­i­dent, Ron Cocome: This usu­ally never hap­pens any­more, but this time there has been an offi­cial advance com­mu­nity notice. We have been alerted that the US Postal Ser­vice has decided NOT to renew its Water­gate lease that expires in roughly two years. If we want to keep Foggy Bottom’s only post office, we are going to have to fight for it.

With this unwel­come clos­ing, it would seem that the USPS has taken up the worst of the U.S. busi­ness mod­els. That is to cut costs and expenses as its sole objec­tive. The obvi­ous prob­lem with this model is that you can—and may well—cut costs to zero by sim­ply shut­ting down.

With this unwel­come clos­ing, it would seem that the USPS has taken up the worst of the U.S. busi­ness mod­els. That is to cut costs and expenses as its sole objec­tive. The obvi­ous prob­lem with this model is that you can—and may well—cut costs to zero by sim­ply shut­ting down.

But, this model pro­duces a dan­ger­ous chain of events: the more you cut your ser­vice, the more your cus­tomers are dri­ven to com­peti­tors and so on and so forth.

The USPS seems to be fol­low­ing the same path as much of America’s busi­nesses, cut from the ser­vice end of busi­ness. Shut out­lets, lay off ser­vice per­son­nel. Let the pub­lic wait in longer lines, slow the deliv­ery ser­vice, cut the num­ber of mail pick-ups, etc. And, worse, do so in order to keep rais­ing salaries and bonuses on the top, reward­ing self-dealing admin­is­tra­tors for bad cus­tomer service.

The result is that our ser­vice is cut but not our fees. Ser­vice employ­ees are demor­al­ized while, accord­ing to media accounts, last year the Post­mas­ter Gen­eral made a higher salary, includ­ing bonuses, than the Pres­i­dent of the United States.

I have been told that as another cost cut­ting tech­nique, the USPS intends to close all sub-stations, such as ours at the Water­gate. This is mind­less bureau­cracy at work as sub­sta­tions are by no means equal. The Water­gate Post Office serves a large, heav­ily pop­u­lated busi­ness, diplo­matic, uni­ver­sity and res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hood. I dare­say it does far more busi­ness and serves far more peo­ple than many full ser­vice post offices.

If we are to save our Water­gate Post Office we need many voices to speak out. Please write a short note demand­ing renewal of the lease and that Water­gate Post Office be kept oper­a­tional, as this is a cru­cially impor­tant amenity in our community.

Send these let­ters to:

Hon. John E. Pot­ter, Post­mas­ter Gen­eral and CEO – USPS
475 L’Enfant Plaza, SW, Wash­ing­ton, DC 20260

CC: Car­olyn Lewis Gal­lagher, Chair­woman – USPS
Same address as above.

CC: Hon. Eleanor Holmes Nor­ton, Attn: Cartwright Moore, Senior Case­worker,
529 14th Street, NW #900, Wash­ing­ton, DC 20045

CC: Asher Cor­son, FBA Pres­i­dent
955 26th Street, NW, Wash­ing­ton, DC 20037