The Clanton Advertiser

More than 30 members of the Verbena community gathered Tuesday night to show support in keeping the Verbena Post Office open.

Officer in charge (OIC) and Verbena postmaster Cindy Littlefield said a meeting was called by the Post Plan Committee and the United States Postal Service of Verbena at Verbena Baptist Church at 6 p.m. to discuss the post plan, a fiscal year/budget which would determine revenue for the post office.

“The meeting was mainly to determine what would be necessary to keep the post office doors open,” Littlefield said. “The meeting was also a time to answer questions and provide information or address concerns from the community.”

Littlefield said people from the community wrote letters and shared input and opinions about keeping the post office open.

“It was encouraging to see so much support from the community for the post office,” Littlefield said. “In a community this size, the post office is the gathering place for a lot of people and seeing it shut down would be very hard.”

Littlefield said one of the reasons smaller post offices nationwide are being forced to deal with budget cuts is largely due to technology.

“Technology has made it very difficult for post offices to stay open,” Littlefield said.

After hearing input from the community, a decision was made to cut back the hours of the post office 30 minutes a day.

Now, the post office will be open Monday-Friday from 8 a.m.- 4 p.m. with lunch being from 12-2 p.m. instead of 12-1:30 p.m.

Saturday hours are 8 a.m.-10:30 p.m.

Access to delivery receptacles will not change and everyone will still have access to mail receptacles.

“The people of this community really showed their support to keep this place open,” Littlefield said. “I don’t know if it was because of the meeting or not but we have been really busy today with a lot of customers stopping in. It has been great.”

The post office is located at 3919 U.S. Highway 31 in Verbena.