Many unhappy with postal change

From the NY Times:

For decades, stamps on letters mailed in New York City have generally been canceled with squiggly lines of ink and the name of the sender’s home borough. But this tradition may itself soon be canceled, at least in Brooklyn and Queens and on Staten Island.

Under the Postal Service’s plan, most mail from the three boroughs would be sent to a central processing center in East New York, Brooklyn, where it would be branded with a new emblem:

“TRIBORO, NY

BKLYN-QNS-STATEN ISL.”

The plan was spawned because of a 29 percent decline in the volume of first-class mail over the past decade. Officials say the change would save $6.7 million annually.

A host of elected officials, from the relevant borough presidents to New York’s two United States senators, has decried the proposal, along with postal union officials who translate a consolidated postmark into lost jobs. And dismay is rippling across this proposed new land called “Triboro,” where many who know about the plan resent the prospect of being stripped of their envelope identifier.

The debate invariably provokes a discussion of the status and hierarchy of the city’s outer regions, home to a mix of proud lifelong residents and immigrants who cleave fiercely to the identity of their piece of New York. It also highlights how differently each borough sees itself from its neighbors and deflates any notion of the boroughs as some sort of ensemble supporting cast to Manhattan. It is, in some ways, reminiscent of the outrage that occurs whenever New York gets a new area code.

They take the Triboro name away from where we want it, and give it to us where we don't.