On Oct. 22, The Beacon convened communities from across Missouri on Zoom to hear from panelists about United States Postal Service changes coming to Missouri and how they could affect people locally. 

The Delivering for America plan is an effort to make USPS revenue cover operating costs, in part through service cuts such as transporting mail from post offices to processing centers less frequently. 

Panelists were Elena Patel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, and Garrett Hawkins, the president of the Missouri Farm Bureau. 

They concurred that USPS’s plan seeks cost savings. But they said those savings are achieved through slower service with disproportionate harm to rural communities. 

The panelists framed USPS as an essential public service whose current self-funding model no longer fits the digital era, urging congressional appropriations rather than service cuts. 

In his experience and those of the farm bureau’s members, Hawkins said, late bills, damaged medication and business disruptions are causing a sense of declining reliability. 

“When I sell calves at the livestock market, you better believe I’m either picking up the check myself or I’m having someone hand deliver it, because I don’t trust the mail,” he said.

The Beacon’s most recent coverage of USPS cuts under the consolidation plan reports that audits of St. Louis and Kansas City plants reinforce the story of declining reliability and poor rollout of communications. 

Overall, the panelists and audience members expressed concern and frustration but also hope for solutions. 

The postal service is “one of the most trusted institutions in the United States. It has a presence everywhere.” Patel said. “And so there’s an opportunity, I think, to just recognize what it is and fund it accordingly.”

Common themes heard from panelists and audience members

• Everyday reliability and quality of life: Panelists and attendees described mail as a service that ties their routines together allowing them to pay bills, receive medicine or even run a small business. When deliveries become slow or go missing, the disruptions feel personal. 

• Rural reach: The new USPS plan affects rural towns most. With fewer pickups and longer routes, delays multiply across zip codes already short on alternatives. Overall, communities are paying more for a lesser quality of services. Hawkins said it creates a sense of unequal treatment within the same public system. 

• Strain inside the system: Audits and worker accounts highlight overextended staff, vacant positions and manual sorting where automation should happen. Local post office employees continue to show up for their communities but carry the frustration of decisions made far from their towns.

• Communication gaps: Many residents and even local offices say they learned of service changes only after the effects appeared. The short public comment window and limited outreach left communities feeling left out of a national decision that touches daily life.

• Adapting locally in rural areas: Panelists mentioned that they see communities find workarounds by driving checks into town if they are in rural areas, switching to online payments where the internet allows or building longer lead times into transactions. But residents still suffer when mail service is unreliable. Hawkins said he’s received medication that was “pulverized” in the mail and heard from the pharmacy that he was the fifth person that week to have medication damaged in the mail. “We’ve had some members try to switch to online bill pay,” he said. “High-speed internet continues to be an issue in rural areas. So it’s not exactly easy to transition to an online business.” 

• Shared concern for the future: There’s broad agreement that the postal service remains an important part of civic and economic life. The conversation centered not on blame but on how to preserve connection and consistency in an era when communication habits, technology and expectations are shifting faster than the system built to serve them.

If you have a story idea or idea for a community listening session let us know on our website or email our community manager at estrella@thebeacon.media.