And you thought government was here to SERVE…
There was a story in all the papers over the weekend about the end of "trashcan mail" for summer residents of an island off the coast of Maine.
SUTTON ISLAND, Maine—The U.S. Postal Service has ended a decades-old tradition in which mail was delivered to this small offshore island by a private ferry service and left in a specially marked trash can on the dock for recipients to pick up.
Postal Service higher-ups got wind of the practice used to serve those living in the island’s 25 or so seasonal homes and decided it had to be halted for security reasons.
[snip]
residents will now have to make the 2-mile ocean journey to the post office in Northeast Harbor. "That can mean a three-hour trip out of your day just to get the mail," she said.
The peculiar but cherished method of moving the mail had been used since at least the 1950s, according to residents of Sutton Island, one of five islands that make up the town of Cranberry Isles. The island has no roads to speak of, which is why the odd system came to be.
Hmmm. A system that worked since the fifties, excepting a single complaint of slow outbound mail? We can’t have that, can we? And so it goes. A government service actually serving citizens must come to an end. After all, who do these people think they are, anyway? Rules are rules… Next thing you know, they’ll want mail delivered through rain and sleet and snow, too.