HELENA, Mont. ( AP) — The top U.S. Postal Service official on Thursday took his case for rural post office closures straight to the people it will hurt most, telling Montanans that up to 3,600 small post offices around the country need to be shuttered as part of cost-cutting moves.

Rural residents who traveled to Helena to meet Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe answered right back, telling him they depend on their post offices.

One woman from the southwestern Montana town of Basin said she has no Internet access and relies on the mail. But like many other rural residents, she does not receive mail delivery.

DeDe Rhodes said if her post office closes, the next one is more than 10 miles away, making her regular trip to pick up mail much more costly.

“I need you to really consider what we are saying. People need their rural post offices,” Rhodes told Donahoe. “Let’s look at the urban areas, maybe they don’t need as many post offices because they get their mail delivered right to their door, or at least to the curb.”

The agency needs to reorganize in part because of a 60 percent decline in the number of people paying bills through the mail and the cost of paying into its employee retirement benefits, Donahoe told the gathering in Helena, which is facing the loss of its mail processing center.

Last year, postal losses totaled $5.1 billion, and those losses are projected to grow.

Donahoe’s Montana visit comes as the Senate prepares as early as next week to take up legislation that would slow, if not stop, the Postal Service’s plans to close roughly half of the nation’s 460 mail processing centers beginning this year.

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