The Dover Post Office is staying open - for now.

According to a spokesman, the U.S. Postal Service is no longer considering the post office for possible closure as part of a nationwide search for ways to cut the agency's costs.

The decision was based on "the needs of the service and current operating conditions," spokesman Ray Daiutolo said in an email.

Thanks to a notice posted months ago, frequent customers of the Dover facility already knew their local post office had been liberated, said Donna Botterbusch, who wrote a letter to the editor of The York Dispatch last year arguing against closure.

"I was relieved," she said Thursday.

Botterbusch, 59, interviews homeschooled students and prepares state-required evaluations for the state. She said she uses the post office often to mail the reports back to families.

It's an extremely busy post office with lines so long, "sometimes I'll turn around and come back later," Botterbusch said.

"I just couldn't see how they could do that," she said of the possible closure. Dover's office was one of nearly 3,700 locations nationwide the Postal Service announced last year it was reviewing for possible closure.

It was the only York County location to appear on the list, though declining demand for service at the Hallam office had led to its closure months earlier.

Meanwhile this week, Congress drew the ire of Postal Service higher-ups who criticized lawmakers' efforts to intervene in the agency's cost-cutting plans.

By a 62-37 vote Wednesday, U.S. senators approved a measure that would give the Postal Service an $11 billion cash infusion while delaying controversial decisions on closing post offices and ending Saturday delivery. The vote split mostly along rural-urban lines.

Over the past several weeks, the bill was modified more than a dozen times, adding new restrictions on closings and cuts to service that rural-state senators said would hurt their communities the most.

The issue now goes to the House, which has yet to consider a separate version of the bill.

The agency criticized the Senate measure, saying it fell far short in stemming financial losses.

"It is totally inappropriate in these economic times to keep unneeded facilities open. There is simply not enough mail in our system today," the Postal Service's board of governors said in a statement. "It is also inappropriate to delay the implementation of five-day delivery."

The Senate bill would halt the immediate closing of up to 252 mail-processing centers and 3,700 post offices, part of a postal cost-cutting plan to save some $6.5 billion a year.

The measure would save about half the mail processing centers the Postal Service wants to close, reducing possible closures from 252 to 125, allowing more areas to maintain overnight first-class mail delivery for at least three more years. It also would bar any shutdowns before the November elections, protect rural post offices for at least a year, give affected communities new avenues to appeal closing decisions and forbid cuts to Saturday delivery for two years.

Daiutolo said he did not know if or how a mail-processing center in Lancaster, where York's mail is currently processed, would be affected by congressional action. The Lancaster facility was one of 10 Pennsylvania locations slated to be closed or consolidated sometime after mid-May.

The Senate measure would also give the Postal Service an infusion of roughly $11 billion, basically a refund of overpayments made in previous years to a federal retirement fund. That would give it immediate liquidity to pay down debt to forestall bankruptcy and finance buyouts to 100,000 postal employees.

The agency could make smaller annual payments into a future retiree health benefits account, gain flexibility in trimming worker compensation benefits and find additional ways to raise postal revenue under a new chief innovation officer.

The Senate bill faces an uncertain future. The House version, approved in committee last year, would create a national commission with the power to scrap no-layoff clauses in employee contracts and make other wide-ranging cuts.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

- Reach Erin James at 505-5439 or ejames@yorkdispatch.com or on Twitter @ydcity.