They marched and chanted in a circle outside the Imperial Beach Post Office Monday.
“Hey! Hey! The Postal Service has to stay!”
About two dozen Imperial Beach residents and union members are afraid the United States Postal Service will eventually close the only post office in IB. Local American Postal Workers Union President Bob Waterhouse said he sees the writing on the wall.
“It’s almost like I can see somebody pushing a boulder towards a cliff and I’m telling you, he’s going to push it over the cliff,” said Waterhouse.
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That was his metaphor for U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. Waterhouse believed DeJoy rewrote the USPS rule book, the PO 408, to give him the power to close post offices as he sees fit.
“The Postmaster General has now rewritten that rule book so he can point at an office, tell them to close, and within a couple months it will disappear,” Waterhouse explained. “So, under the Constitution, we have the right to our Postal Service to be readily accessible. He’s taken that away from us.”
A USPS spokesman bluntly told NBC 7 in a statement, “The Imperial Beach Post Office is not closing.”
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The protestors don’t believe it.
“We want some official notice saying, ‘Hey, we have no plans to change the operations of this post office,’” said Imperial Beach City Councilman Jack Fisher.
Fisher is concerned about the lease. The USPS does not own the building.
“Let’s say two years from now the lease ends. Are they going to keep this building for two employees? Probably not,” said Waterhouse.
The USPS spokesman countered, “I don’t have the details about the lease for the Imperial Beach Post Office. But I can state that we have absolutely no plans to close the current facility or to depart the Imperial Beach community.”
“I’d rather have something in writing that says, ‘Hey, here we go. On this day, at this time, we are saying we want this not to be closed,’” said Councilman Fisher.
NBC 7 has confirmed many of the employees from the Imperial Beach Post Office have been transferred to other locations, including the next closest post office in Chula Vista. The USPS said those transfers will not impact service to Imperial Beach customers. Waterhouse didn’t bite. He won’t believe the IB Post Office is safe until DeJoy reverses the changes he made to the rule book.
“They have to go take that PO 408, which is the handbook on closing offices, and put it back to the version it was before 2023,' he said.
