Our Local Post Office
By Dan Law
There are many rumors running around regarding the future status of our local
post offices. So I have been playing investigative reporter trying to dig up the-real
story and hoped to print the facts here, but I do not feel I have the full story yet. I
have interviewed postal employees and postmasters at three of the four local post
offices so far. Almost everyone has declined to comment officially, and without a
proper source to quote, I will not print the anonymous stories.
The only person confident to go on the record with her statement was our
Atlantic Beach Postmaster, Ms. Traxler, to whom I would like to say thank you. She
gave me what I consider to be the public-relations official answer. According to Ms.
Traxler, the future of our local post office will be fully determined after the current
postal study has been completed. This process can take up to a year to complete.
She stated that the current status is business as usual. There are no current plans to
reduce operations or customer services, and we can continue leasing our post office
boxes with confidence.
Our local home service carriers may be transferred to work out of the post office
in Morehead City, which will not change how our home mail service is handled. It
will be business as usual. Part of the study will be considering whether to continue
using the current building in Atlantic Beach. The property there is very valuable
and could be put on the market for sale. If that happens, our Atlantic Beach office
will just move to a cheaper, rented location in our local community to continue our
post office mail boxes and other services currently provided.
Another postmaster provided a phone number in Charlotte, where I was sup
posed to be able to obtain more information regarding the future of our three
island postal outlets. So far, after several calls to that office, I have only talked to
an answering machine, and no one has returned my calls. I’ve spent hours online
looking for any other official information and haven’t found any list or evidence
that differs from Ms. Traxler’s information. There is a list on the Web that addresses
some North Carolina post offices that are currently slated for closure, but our local
offices are not on this hst.
I have also e-mailed an inquiry to the official government oversight office, the
Postal Regulatory Commission, seeking input for this article, and so far, they too
have not responded. If you wish to view the information on the Web page, go to
http://prc.gov/prc-pages/default.aspx. I will continue to investigate this issue and
will submit more information as it becomes available in coming months.
Summer Travel (Continued from 13)
there are so many wonderful sites to see, from shining sea to the majestic Blue
Ridge Mountains. There are just too many historic and scenic destinations in our
great state to be able to see them all in just one month. So how do you decide which
ones to visit? Which sites offer both scenic Views and an educational experience?
Here’s one smart way to decide. By going to http://gis.ncdcr.gov/hpoweb, you
can take your family for a hop on a virtual magic carpet ride. Fly over the state’s
cities and towns online; zoom down to Victorian neighborhoods, old commercial
districts and textile mill villages; and stroll up and down the street.
This Web site maps the state’s 2,700 listings in the National Register of His
toric Places, which includes 500 historic districts and 32,000 other places that
have other types of historic designations or have been recorded in historic build
ing inventories over the past 40 years. “It may be a little bewildering at first look,
because there is so much on it,” says Michael T. Southern, Senior Architectural
Historian/GIS Coordinator, who coordinates computer mapping for the Depart
ment of Cultural Resources’ State Historical Preservation Office (HPO). Southern
reports that eventually all of approximately 120,000 properties documented in the
HPO’s survey files will be mapped.
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July 2mm vliitTfte 13: