Keep mail processing in Reno

Two of Carson Valley’s greatest legends are directly related to the mails.

Last month, a group of adventurers traversed the path used by Snowshoe Thompson to transport mail over the Sierra. Later this month, the National Pony Express re-riders will participate in Genoa’s Western Heritage Days. The re-ride passes through the Valley in June.

It hasn’t been all that long ago that mail posted in Carson Valley and destined to local addresses was processed here.

There was a time when everyone knew the postmaster’s name for each of the offices that served our community. A new postmaster being appointed was front page news dating back to the founding of this publication. The R-C and its predecessors relied entirely on the mail for home delivery until 1989.

For the most part, these days the mail comes postmarked from Reno, even if you put it in a Minden post office box to be delivered to another Minden post office box. It doesn’t take much of a social media search to find people complaining about the mail across Carson Valley.

Our business has an immediate concern with a proposal to move mail processing from Reno to Sacramento because some of our publications are only distributed by mail.

But that concern reaches deeper to questions about how long it takes bills to arrive and then be sent out. We know many people pay bills automatically. However, implementing a change that’s likely to extend the time for someone to receive a bill and then get it back to the biller will just contribute to the death spiral presently underway.

Given all that, it seems counterintuitive to move the major mail processing center from Reno to Sacramento for many, many reasons, but in our opinion it’s going the wrong direction.

We know from hard experience that relying on ground transportation over the mountains in winter is not a good idea, even if there was someone willing to strap on skis and haul it on their back.