The post office wants to move out the retail portion so that it can make more space in the downtown location for delivery operations. This logic seems backwards. It would make more sense to keep the retail portion in the central, well-established location in which it is already located, and create a larger delivery operations area elsewhere. The downtown location should not be used only as a warehouse & delivery area. This is a location that can be easily accessed, and many people can -- get this -- WALK to it. An established downtown promotes foot traffic along with automobile access. If a retail location is moved anywhere else in town, then EVERYONE will have to drive to it. The location of the post office in the center of our downtown helps to establish something sorely needed -- a sense of community. If this is taken away from us, our downtown could become a ghost town. The U.S. Postal service is such an important part of our community and history. The tangible, daily interaction part of their service needs to stay here in the area of town that has been established for over a century.

I'm sure that people much smarter than us will conduct detailed studies covering the impact of this loss, and also detailed traffic studies showing what increased traffic in other areas of our town will have on all of us. We know the US Postal service doesn't want to cause any harm to our community -- quite the opposite. They want to serve us all. And the best way to do this may be to have a smaller additional satellite retail office for our residents living on the west side of our town. Traffic is already so congested around the parkway and Barnegat Blvd. area, it is very difficult to travel through these areas during certain times of the day. Why would you add to this situation by forcing MORE people to go through that area? So why not do the right thing and serve everyone without causing long term inconvenience and damage to the entire community.

Please attend the November 6th's Township Committee meeting to listen to what is proposed, and voice your concerns. Sadly only a small amount of people are able to attend these types of meetings which is unfortunate when issues that are very important like this are being decided. So if you want to save our downtown, it may be time to start writing some letters...and how about this...get up and do something about it. Now's the time for involvement. Too many people have sat by and watched us lose one thing after another in downtown Barnegat. It won't be long until we have nothing left to lose. Sorry for more bad news, let's all work together and start making it better.