Indianapolis, IN — The first Village Post Office in Indiana opens on Friday, May 11, 2012. It is located in the southern Indiana town of Mariah Hill, near the Kentucky border. The new postal center will be officially opened by Greater Indiana District Manager (A) Bernice Grant, and several Postal Service executives and local officials will be present at the ceremony.

Last year, the Postal Service introduced the Village Post Office (VPO) model as an alternate retail location for postal products and services where the community has no existing Post Office, or will be losing its Post Office.

VPOs are operated by local businesses contracting with the Postal Service, and offer a range of popular postal products and services including stamps and flat-rate packaging. Depending on the nature of the business, many VPOs can offer around-the-clock service and access to P.O. Boxes.

To date, 19 VPOs have opened nationwide, and in the Greater Indiana District, three additional VPOs — Leopold, Clarksburg and Arlington — are slated to open in late June.

The Mariah Hill VPO is located at the Patriot Station and is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, and from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Saturday. The Patriot Station VPO offers stamps and postal products, flat-rate packaging and P.O. Boxes.

# # #

The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

Please Note: For broadcast quality video and audio, photo stills and other media resources, visit the USPS Newsroom at http://about.usps.com/news/welcome.htm.

For reporters interested in speaking with a regional Postal Service public relations professional, please go to http://about.usps.com/news/media-contacts/usps-local-media-contacts.pdf.

A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 151 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. With 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $65 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 35th in the 2011 Fortune 500. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency for six years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.

Follow USPS on Twitter @USPS_PR and at Facebook.com/usps.