Local residents spoke out Tuesday evening against the proposed closing of the Mendota Post Office at a public forum at Henry Sibley High School.

Citizens and local legislators listened to a presentation about the financial troubles facing the United State Postal Service before arguing, passionately and sometimes irately, against closing the Mendota location. 

“I would like it open for as long as possible, which means for the rest of our lives and 50, 60 generations down the road,” David Wayne Robinette of Mendota said. “I want it open forever. As long as someone’s in that valley with a heartbeat, I want that post office open.”

In July, USPS released a list of 3,700 of their retail locations across the country being studied for closure, which included the Mendota location.

The Mendota Post Office was chosen for closure because it is in the category of having less than $600,000 a year in retail revenue with five alternate access locations within two miles.

Margaret Campbell, a post office discontinuation coordinator, spoke of the “severe decline” of the postal service, precipitated by the growth of online mail and commerce (“We can’t stuff the Internet genie back in the bottle,” she said) and federal legislation involving postal employee health care and retirement funds.

After posting an $8.5 billion operating loss in 2010, the service has been considering closing about 10 percent of its offices.

The Mendota Post Office, which has only one employee, has expenses of just under $100,000 a year and revenues of a little more than $300,000, said Campbell.

Many residents argued that these figures suggested the post office is profitable and should not be closed, though postal officials said that “profitability” is a flawed method of evaluating post offices since the $100,000 expenditure figure does not include the cost of operations that form the core of the postal service such as planes, distribution centers, machines and the staff to operate them.

USPS spokesperson Pete Nowacki said that while some of the revenues could be lost if the Mendota Post Office were to close, most would transfer to other offices.

A Place in History

Mendota’s mayor, Brian Mielke, said he thought the chances that the Mendota Post Office would be closed were between 50 and 75 percent, but that he was hoping the post office’s long history and rumored legislative connections would save it from oblivion.

"We have deep historical roots in Mendota leading back into the early 1800s,” Mielke told postal officials at the meeting. “We’re more than just a number and math.”

Henry Sibley, Minnesota’s first governor, was a central figure in the establishment of the Mendota Post Office, Mielke said. The Mendota Post Office was originally located in the Minnesota Fur Trading Company building.

State Rep. Rick Hansen (D-39A) also made a case for the post office’s historical significance.

“I think it may be within your discretion to recognize the heritage status, that it is one of the earliest parts of Minnesota,” he said.

Other speakers at the public forum made an economic case for saving the post office.

Greg Barnholdt, the owner of Greg’s Barbershop of Mendota, said he gets business as people walk by his shop, located in the same building as the post office.

“I see all day long how many people walk into that post office,” he said. “They’re not just from Mendota. They’re not just from Eagan. They’re not just from West St. Paul. They come from all over to use this post office. There’s a number of reasons why they do. It’s very convenient, we have a wonderful postmaster and I think that people like to see Americana as it is in this little town.”

A Promise Made?

Mielke said the best chance of saving the post office would be to unearth a rumored promise never to close the Mendota Post Office that Congress may have made to the city in the 1960s.

“In the 1960s, our post office was on the list to be closed, but then Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey fought to keep our post office open and brought that all the way up to Congress, who at that time pledged to Mendota that they would never be on that list for closure,” Mielke said.

Mielke said he was working with Sen. Al Franken’s office to corroborate this story, which he called “more than an old wives’ tale.”

“That would be the smoking gun that would save us from ever having this conversation or being on these lists again,” Mielke said.

The Mendota Post Office is at the start of a 60-day proposal period, to be followed by a 30-day “posting of final decision,” which would be followed by a 60-day discontinuation period should the service decide to terminate the station.

“We’re looking at probably five months or more before the post office would close, if it will,” said Campbell.