Instead of shutting the doors on three post offices in Mathews County and one in Gloucester, the newest plan to save the U.S. Postal Service calls locally for reducing the hours of service of 18 post offices in the two counties.

Nationwide, the plan would reduce service hours of some 13,000 post offices. Last summer, the USPS announced it was considering the closure of 3,653 post office retail facilities throughout the country, including Schley in Gloucester and Onemo, Grimstead and New Point in Mathews.

The postal service recently dropped that plan and has instead developed a proposal that will affect all but the largest post offices in Gloucester and Mathews.

According to the website of the USPS, if the plan were to go into effect, Gloucester post offices at Achilles, Ordinary, Ware Neck and Woods Cross Roads would all be cut back to four hours a day, while the Bena, Dutton and Wicomico post offices would each be open six hours daily. The post office at Schley in Gloucester would see the deepest reduction in services under the proposed plan—it would be open only two hours per day.

In Mathews, eight post offices could be reduced to four hours a day—Foster, Grimstead, Gwynn, Hallieford, Moon, New Point. Onemo and Susan—while the post offices at Hudgins and Port Haywood would be cut back to six hours per day each.

Only the largest post offices in the two counties—Gloucester, Gloucester Point, Mathews, Cobbs Creek and North—would not see reduction in hours.

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