Skwentna Post Office off the chopping block

SKWENTNA — People in Skwentna breathed a cautious sigh of relief when U.S. Sen. Mark Begich announced that the post office here is not one in Alaska that the U.S. Postal Service is considering for closure.

Last month, the USPS announced nearly 3,700 post offices, including 36 in Alaska, had been targeted for possible closure as a way to reduce costs and expenses. Only one of those was in the Mat-Su Borough — the tiny Skwentna post office at the former Iditarod checkpoint.

The postal service has been making national headlines lately as the service works to slash its budget in the wake of $8 billion in losses last year. The closures are a move in that direction.

Late last month, Begich said he’d successfully gotten the list of Alaska post offices facing possible closure reduced to 11. On Sept. 8, he said the list had been reduced further to five.

“Postal services in Alaska are essential to our way of life, and I know it’s troubling to communities to even have their post office considered for closure,” Sen. Begich says in a press release.

The 31 post offices taken off the list were all in regions that lack an alternative to postal service. Begich said the five still being studied are the offices on Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Eilsen Air Force Base in Fairbanks, the Anchorage Postal Store in the 5th Avenue Mall and the Douglas Post Office in the Juneau area.

Longtime Skwentna postmaster Joe Delia said the community has pushed to keep the office open since hearing the news early this year that it was set to close.

In a letter stating his case to the U.S. Postal Service, he writes that the tiny office has 48 active post office boxes. The Skwentna airport was left open to serve the post office.

“It is the only state-maintained runway between Anchorage/Mat-Su Valley and McGrath, a safety for all pilots,” Delia wrote.

He said the mail brings in food, medicine, propane, home schooling supplies and household goods. Without postal service, he wrote, residents would have no place to get money orders or have documents notarized. They wouldn’t even be able to vote.

“The mail flight serves as our commuter plane on a seat-available basis. People used this to get into the city for doctor appointments, hospital stays, go to an (accountant) to get taxes figured, shop for supplies we can’t get from catalogs and visit with friends and family we don’t get to see too often. In other words, the post office is a lifeline in Skwentna.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270. Contact Heather A. Resz at heather.resz@frontiersman.com or 352-2268.