You can write anything in the study that you want to.

Mr. LEHNE. I know of no study that will change the requirement at the present time.

Again, the Postal Service will carry out that commitment. I mean we know of no reason why those plans should be changed at the present time.

Mrs. ABZUG. What are you using it for now?

Mr. LEHNE. I have been up there. I have seen it. I have been on it quite often. It has trucks parked all over the place when I have been there. It is used for van storage and trucks getting in and out of the general post office and Morgan station.

There are no other places to put those trucks.

Mrs. ABZUG. Did you conduct a study on that?
Mr. LEHNE. Ma'am?

Mrs. ABZUG. Did you conduct a study as to where you could possibly park trucks when people have no place to live?

Mr. LEHNE. We have a very serious vehicle problem throughout Manhattan, and we do not have a solution for it.

Mrs. ABZUG. Did you conduct a study on that?

Mr. LEHNE. Yes.

Mrs. Abzug. What does it show?

Mr. LEHNE. We do not have an answer, yet.

Mrs. ABZUG. How long have you been conducting that study? Mr. LEHNE. I cannot put an answer on that statement as to how long we have been conducting a study.

Mrs. ABZUG. Is there such a study available for anyone to see?
Mr. LEHNE. There have been various studies made of that.
Mr. GRAY. Are these Government-owned trucks, General?
Mr. LEHNE. I think they are a combination, Mr. Gray.

Mr. GRAY. I was going to say why cannot a lot of this be farmed out to the star route carriers that park their trucks in their own parking places?

Mr. LEHNE. I think there are star routes, in and out of the area, and some Government-owned vehicles, and a transfer vehicle for mail between the various stations in New Jersey.

Mr. GRAY. I was over there and one of the staff members here in the room can verify this, we rode over with a member of the New York General Assembly at approximately 7 p.m., and out of a three square block area we saw at least 50 percent of the lot vacant.

It looks to me like, with a little management on someone's part, some of the work could be farmed out to the star route carriers that could carry the mail back and forth to the terminals without having to park these vehicles in this high density area of New York City.

Mr. LEHNE. Seven o'clock is a very vital time for the post office, and that is the busy time, from 5 to 11 or 12 o'clock at night, which is the busy time for processing the mail.

Mr. GRAY. It is my understanding that you have three shifts; you are busy all the time?

Mr. LEHNE. We are trying to move more to the early hours; that is right, to make it a better job for people who work here.

Mr. GRAY. I have gone to the Government Printing Office after midnight to drop things in for the record and there are more people around the Washington Post Office than around noontime.

I cannot buy the argument it is the busy time. It certainly looks to me like we need a little initiative on someone's part; the lackadaisical attitude expressed by your people in New York is all we got; we are going to hang on to it, so what? Either these are awfully dumb people or they were instructed to say nothing because we received no answers from an all-day hearing in New York and finally elicited from your chief of realty division that he knew there was a shortage of housing and he felt sorry for the people, but-and he stopped right there, shrugged his shoulders and that was it.

It is really a crime when you look at the people that were displaced, and we had them come in one after the other before the committee, people with three or four children, no place to stay and here the Post Office Department is parking trucks while displacing people.

I would not feel so bad if we had used that for the purpose you took it for. We are using taxpayers' dollars to displace businesses and people for a needed public service, but when you did a 180-degree turnaround and moved away from that facility entirely, the most decent thing you could have done was to give it back to the people you took it from. Yes, the attitude on the part of the Post Office Department is indifference, repudiation of previous agreements with this committee and, now, additional studies.

I give it as another prime example when you do not have any control over how a so-called private corporation is not responsive to the needs of the people or the Congress; because here is a very good example.

Any other questions?

Mrs. ABZUG. Do you have in your studies any specific plans with another kind of future use for this land in your studies to date? Mr. LEHNE. No, ma'am.

Mrs. ABZUG. Mr. Batrus?

Mr. BATRUS. Nothing specific, Mrs. Abzug, that I know of.

I mentioned earlier just some broad range studies of the entire New York metropolitan complex.

Mrs. ABZUG. So you leave me with the impression that the reason you have rejected my request, you have stated it is excess to future needs, but you refuse to declare it excess to future needs and you might want to continue to deprive the people in this area and use it for some other purposes.

Mr. BATRUS. Not at all.

Mrs. ABZUG. You would not be contemplating to use this land to fill the coffers of this new organization, would you?

Mr. BATRUs. That is correct.

Mrs. ABZUG. You make that statement here?

Mr. BATRUS. Yes, ma'am.

Mrs. ABZUG. Is it possible that you might recommend making a statement to declare this excess to future needs, Mr. Lehne, to Mr. Blount and the corporation?

Mr. LEHNE. I think we have set forth our position very clearly already.

You are pressing for a form to be signed or something, if I understand you.

Mrs. ABZUG. If you do declare it excess to future needs, we can work with GSA and prepare for building housing in that area which is very critical to us.

Mr. LEHNE. I understand it is very critical. I spent quite a few years around New York myself. I understand some of those housing problems.

We will obviously talk to the Postmaster General who has been intimately involved in this problem.

Governor Rockefeller has been after that site; Mr. Lindsay has been after it: Mr. Farbstein has been after it.

We have the Housing and Urban Development people up there looking at it from the standpoint of, this is a good location for lowcost housing.

A lot of people are concerned about it and we are, too. We are a public corporation. We are part of the Government whether you want to accept us or not. We are still part of the Government.

Mr. GRAY. We would like to accept you. You will not accept us. Mrs. ABZUG. I certainly would. And being a public corporation, I would like you to evaluate, you know, the needs of parking trucks to the needs of over 300 families and 33 businesses for a place to live. Mr. LEHNE. Mrs. Abzug, we would like to be able to deliver the mail without having vehicles. We have not found a way of doing it yet. We have not been able to do that. If there is a way of doing it, we would sure like to know how to do it.

We are always going to have vehicles around and garages around. It is just a fact of life and some of these prices shock me, as Mr. Terry indicated. We have some very expensive properties tied up in garages throughout the country. The operations people do not know how to get it delivered without having the trucks.

Mr. GRAY. One way, of course, would have been to have a little vision and not cancel all of your railroad contracts where you work the mail en route and get it into Grand Central Station and get it over to the Morgan Street site; and it was the policy, to cancel the mail contracts and force the trains out.

It now takes me 11 days to get a newspaper from my district to my home, 11 days.

Mr. LEHNE. Your home where?

Mr. GRAY. Right here in Arlington, Va., 11 days. When it was worked en route, it was 2 days. Two days after the paper was mailed, I got it at the front door. It is never less than 9 days now.

Mr. LEHNE. This is a daily paper?

Mr. GRAY. Yes. I am having it documented, I am having the mailman sign it.

Mr. TERRY. Mr. Gray, you are not supposed to be talking with the Postal Service employee.

Mr. Chairman, before we go on the point made by General Lehne, I am perfectly aware that the Postal Service Corporation is in need of garage space to house their trucks.

My question is whether or not it needs to be a site that costs in excess of $2 million and which I am acquainted with and which was to be a part of a general upgrading of the site surrounding the proposed Buckley office building, Federal office building, in the Bronx.

My point was, do we need to have a site that costs in excess of $2 million for use of garage facilities? I want the record to be clear that I am certainly cognizant that we need transportation facilities and garage space for those trucks.

Mr. LEHNE. Mr. Terry, I would agree with you and assure you we are not going to use land that is valuable. If there is any other land that we can use, we will use it, and we have been studying the economics of the problem all the way through.

We do not go through with any of the investment provisions until we thoroughly understand the economics of the capital investment and the operating expenses, and they are things we are paying very much attention to.

Please do not take it as final that that is what we want to build on that property. We do not want that land disposed of yet because we were part of getting that land. GSA has the privilege of unilaterally disposing of it. They have that power.

Mr. TERRY. They have it, but you are asking them to hold it, whereas, in the instance of Honolulu, you have indicated to them to abandon in effect a $1,033,090 of plans made in conjunction with the construction of the Honolulu proposed office and courthouse.

Mr. LEHNE. Mr. Terry, that was a mutual decision arrived at in complete agreement with GSA.

The budget that they had, the bids that they had, for that project were much more expensive than their budget that Congress had authorized them. It was a joint discussion with the proper officials in GSA. It was mutually agreed that the Post Office should not be in downtown Honolulu.

We are moving it out to the other Government land near the airport, and as you heard, I believe, Mr. Kreger say that the only redesign in the building was going to take place was the space that the Post Office was going to vacate. But they were going to keep that space for other offices.

We are going to move out to the other Government land at the airport, take our vehicles out of downtown Honolulu, and that was a mutually arrived at decision, completely compatible in the latter part of 1969.

Mr. GRAY. You will have to admit, General, that the taxpayer is going to be saddled with a double facility. GSA testified they are going to be able to build the same size building as originally contemplated, same maintenance crew. You are going to go to the airport and build another facility, and here is a good prime example of management duplication, buildings, and everything else. You can argue all day it is going to be functional and closer to the airport, but you will have to admit without contradiction that we are going to have two facilities in Honolulu instead of one.

Mr. LEHNE. Yes, sir. And we have many other facilities in Honolulu right now. We have other stations being built in Honolulu, and so do other parts of the Government.

The Government cannot conduct all of its services in one building, Mr. Gray.

Mr. GRAY. But just in a short period of 12 months, is this not ironic that all these plans submitted to our committee that were approved are so outdated? And I realize the country is changing, the population is going up, but not that great; and is it not ironic that within the 12-month period after you people get to the point where

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you can smell the meat cooking, you are going to be fuly autonomous ; you are going to have all the money you need from raising postal rates, every plan you entered into with GSA is now bad.

Mr. LEHNE. I think there have been some slight exaggerations in your lengthy speech, if I may say so.

Mr. GRAY. Let's get down to one in my district that I am familiar with. Let's take Carbondale, Ill.

In 1968, the Post Office Department, through condemnation acquired a 42-acre tract. They put out of business seven different firms, displaced a McDonald's hamburger stand doing a good business, and other businesses. Remember, 41/2 acres, in a good location, in the area where 80 percent of the people reside, and after you got an office and you took a look at this new concept of working mail on the outskirts of town and through sectional center concepts, you decided to move that facility completely out of town in the opposite direction of the population center where they will be required to cross nine railroad tracks, numerous stoplights on one-way streets. You justify this on the ground that, one, the original site was not adequate; and two, you wanted to make it more accessible.

I have before me, handed to me by Mr. Jack Grant, and he has been previously identified in the record as Chief of the Realty Division, a site survey conducted by the Post Office Department.

This is less than 3 years old. What reason do they give for buying the original site at a cost of $558,000, under the title "Advantages"? Reasons given are: "It is an adequate area, in an area of considerable residential and commercial growth, and that there are six structures involved."

You say these are the advantages: plenty of room. I want the record to show if you believe that the new Postal Service does not have raw power and a willful disregard for the Congress, just listen to this:

I learned that the Postal Service was going to change locations in my district, a project that my committee authorized. So I asked through the congressional liaison office, and could not get anybody to answer the phone down in Mr. Lehne's office, or the Postmaster General's office, and we did the normal thing everybody else does and went through the congressional liaison and asked them for a meeting with Mr. Lehne.

After 2 weeks of prodding and calling, we finally secured an appointment in my office for 3 p.m. in February. I do not remember the exact date, but it was February of this year.

Now, listen to this carefully. At 2:30, 30 minutes before Mr. Lehne was to arrive in my office for a meeting, he worked up a press release and called newspapers in my district, and tells them that the Postal Service had made a decision to relocate the site at Carbondale, out of town, and then came to my office for the 3 o'clock meeting, armed with a press release that he has already given to the press. I asked Mr. Lehne: "What is the use to have a meeting? You have already preempted any hopes that I had on behalf of my people to keep the present site because it was a good one."

What a willful disregard of the Congress.