Hannah Heimbuch | The Arctic Sounder |
Dec 16, 2011
When the U.S. Postal Service loses $10 billion in one year, it’s no surprise they’re looking to cut costs. Nor that officials look to Alaska.
Costing an estimated $73 million, Alaska’s Bypass Mail System is one of the programs the postal service is considering ditching to make ends meet. Established in the 1970s to help move goods to the Bush affordably, the bypass system subsidizes mail delivery to communities off the road system. It allows rural Alaskans to pay postal prices for freight mail sent by rural air carrier.
A recent report by the USPS Office of the Inspector General laid out a long list of reasons why the bypass system has outgrown its original purpose and has become an unfair drain on the postal service. The report suggests that Alaska shoulder the cost of shipping to roadless communities. But residents and business owners in rural Alaska say that doing away with the system would make many items cost-prohibitive.
Earlier this month, Alaska’s congressional delegation defended bypass mail. Rep. Don Young, Sen. Mark Begich and Sen. Lisa Murkowski collaborated on a formal letter to the Postal Service Inspector General refuting claims that bypass mail is either unnecessary or inequitable. They argue that the service is essential to Alaska and required under the postal service’s mandate to provide like service to all U.S. communities
They also dissected some of the supporting research outlined in the report, citing errors in its depiction of Alaska transportation, food prices, community needs and the amount Alaska invests every year in its rural air systems.
While the future of bypass mail may be on shaky ground, there’s little doubt it provides a service few rural communities could live without. Joseph Ahmaogak, manager of the Olgoonik Corporation Store in Wainwright, receives freight shipments of consumer goods via bypass mail regularly, and relies on the service to keep prices affordable.
“Wainwright is one of hundreds of communities in Alaska not accessible by roads. There’s no other way,” Ahmaogak said. “I know how important bypass is to the community. Without it, a lot of goods and services will need to be priced outrageously.”
One contention in the postal service report was that commercial interests reaped the savings from bypass mail, not rural residents. Ahmaogak disagrees. “The local economy and jobs are limited,” he said. “(Without bypass) low-income families would not be able to purchase basic goods,” Ahmaogak said.
Things like milk, eggs and bread are already priced higher than in urban areas, despite bypass benefits.
Joe Kim, owner of the Point Hope Whaler Inn Restaurant, empathizes with that. Every couple of weeks, he places freight orders from Anchorage or Fairbanks to supply his small restaurant. The price of those orders would double without bypass mail.
“That would mean I’d have to cut back everything,” Kim said. “I’d have to raise prices. That’s the only way I’m going to match it.”
Ahmaogak said he understands the need to adjust when times change and costs soar.
“I know it’s been a long time since Senator Stevens brought (bypass mail) into place and I’m sure there’s some stuff that needs to be fixed,” said Ahmaogak. “But I’m sure working together we can find a way to have those services available and keep the prices low without having the post service be stuck with the large remainder of what it really costs. We’re a state; we should be looking out for own people. We have the resources; we’ll find a way to help put in some of that cost.”
Building and maintaing roads to ALL the rural villages would be cost prohibitive. The maintenance cost annually would be at least double the 73 million spent on bypass mail ...... let alone the initial several billions in road construction....
Why was air access such a huge hit in 1928 for mail and commerce to most of Alaska??? It is the most cost effective....
How many millions of the 73 millions are part of the urban economy ?? Almost all of it...How many millions of dollars of goods and supplies are bought and shipped from urban centers in Alaska to rural areas??... Millions of dollars poor into the urban economies...
How many millions are spent by the State of Alaska for urban revenue sharing and other expenditures....??
Come on now air service to rural Alaska benefits urban Alaskan hunters, fishers, and industry....73 million is a huge savings over ground transportation in remote Alaska....and as Uncle Ted knew it would, provides reasonable passenger service for ALL Alaskans and industry...
Ethnocentric thoughts have no place in logic, or the Alaskan economy....
The answer to this problem lies not in more subsidies, but rather a greater sense of community and support for buying cooperative! The North Slope Borough communities banding together, could create a buying coop that created some heft and buying power for the residents. There is no reason that all of this combined activity could not get them favorable rates matching what they depend on now - from USPS. Incredible that the only ones who have made money on this broken system are the legacy and smaller cargo outfits! Quite a story and ripoff on a grand scale.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Rural Alaska must eventually decide whether it wishes to remain isolated and politically, socially, and economically disconnected from the rest of the world, or deliberately and intentionally move to improve the quality of life for its residents by reducing costs and increasing access to the goods and services most other Alaskans, and Americans in general, hold as a civil baseline.
Roads are, in fact, very expensive, but growth isn't the issue. The issue is how much longer can rural Alaska expect the tax paying public of the United States to massively subsidize every aspect of providing it with anything resembling the modern goods and services current residents there demand?
Build some roads? Ya' think the bypass subsidy is expensive!
Why do they "NEED" to be connected to statewide services? Maybe we should be asking how much sense it makes to encourage these isolated communities to grow?
In many ways, these bush communities remind me of islands in the South Pacific. Terribly isolated, too heavily populated to be self-sustaining and few if any resources. Some of those islands are able to bring in tourists to help support their economy, but none can prosper without government subsidy. Tahiti, and French Polynesia in general, is a prime example. Without the millions of francs poured into Polynesia by the French government, those communities would wither and many would perish. But those subsidies also encourage greater population growth, which in turn requires more subsidies.
France is probably wishing they could find some way to change history and let the English have those islands!
Because there is no local productive economy, encouraging growth in bush communities will lead to more unemployment and an ever increasing expenditure of state and federal monies to support them.
Perhaps it is time for a dialogue about the future of Bush communities.
These communities NEED to be connected to services throughout the state, Have needed to be for a very long time but there has been tremendous resistance to allowing it. at the very least these communities need to have Rail and Energy connections. Most would count this as the bare minimum requirements of sustainability. Indeed only in Alaska is such areas allowed to exist for decades without some connection to civilization. The Time has never be more right for deployment of interior rail expansions to all these rural communities. Thus allowing for freight of all kinds to be available at a fraction of airlifting it in under no longer available subsidies. The fact that Alaska allowed this to be the situation all these years is near criminal in and of itself, but there is nothing we can do about the pasts wasted opportunities. All we can do is move forward to ensure these Alaskans survive in the future.
U.S. Mail should become a once-a-week service instead of six days-a-week. There is nothing in the mail that can't wait a few extra days to be received or be rescheduled to work with weekly service.
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