Tagged: postal service

Financial problems are mounting at the U.S. Postal Service, and that's going to have repercussions on Americans' daily lives. For one thing, you won't be able to assume - or even hope - that a stamped letter will arrive at its destination the next day.   

That's because the Postal Service is looking for ways to save money, even as it awaits possible assistance from Congress.

You have to admit, this has been a very odd year in Michigan, and things seem likely to get odder. We have a governor who happily calls himself a nerd, almost never wears a tie, never ran for office before, and has been phenomenally successful at getting the legislature to pass whatever laws he wants.

His only failure so far has been to get them to accept a bridge which wouldn’t cost anything, would mean ten thousand jobs and two billion free dollars from the federal government.

UPDATE  1:45pm

The leader of thousands of rural mail employees says she’s worried about a U.S. Post Office proposal that could close many small town post offices.  The national postal officials say they need to make cuts to reduce red ink.  The postal service lost eight billion dollars last year.  

Cindy Opalek is the president of the Michigan Rural Letter Carriers Association.   She says closing small town post offices will hurt rural communities. 

“The people who work there get a little more connected…a little more bonded with the people that they serve.   That will be a shame if they lose that.    Does the (U.S.) Post Office care?   I couldn’t tell you." 

ORIGINAL POST: 1:05pm

The U.S. Postal Service has released a list of 62 Post Offices in Michigan that they're studying for closure.

The potential closures could affect smaller cities like Kingsford, Baron City, and North Star. And they could also affect bigger cities like Grand Rapids, Detroit, and Lansing.

In a statement, Postmaster General Patrick Donahue said closed offices could be replaced by "expanded access locations" - similar to how some pharmacies are now located in your grocery store:

“Today, more than 35 percent of the Postal Service’s retail revenue comes from expanded access locations such as grocery stores, drug stores, office supply stores, retail chains, self-service kiosks, ATMs and usps.com, open 24/7. Our customer’s habits have made it clear that they no longer require a physical post office to conduct most of their postal business.”

The U.S. Postal Service currently operates 32,000 retail offices (the largest retail network in the country). It's studying the potential closure of 3,700 offices.

The USPS suffered $8.5 billion in losses in 2010.

Is your city on this list? How would you feel if your local post office was closed?

The Wall Street Journal reported recently that the U.S. Postal Service is hoping to close a series of post offices around the country to save money. From the article:

A mail processing center in Flint may be slated for closure next month. The United States Postal Service may move the city’s mail sorting and processing to Pontiac.

Shannon LaBruyere is with the U.S. Postal Service. She says if the closure goes through, 113 jobs will be affected; half would be relocated to Pontiac, half would be offered other positions likely outside of Michigan.

"They will be the people who bear the brunt of the change. Our customers, from our preliminary assessments, won’t see any change in the service they receive."

USPS will hold a public meeting to discuss the possible Flint closure on March 23 at the city's Holiday Inn Gateway Centre.

The Postal Service lost $8.5 billion last fiscal year and plans to close 2,000 post offices nationwide this year. LaBruyere says USPS would save "$6.5 million dollars per year" by moving Flint operations to the Michigan Metroplex in Pontiac. 

A Washington Post article in February says President Obama's 2012 budget recommends about $11 billion in relief to help stem losses at the Postal Service:

The losses stem in part from hefty personnel costs not borne by other federal agencies. One is a requirement, imposed by a 2006 law, that it set aside money each year to cover the costs of future health benefits for its retired workers.

In the Obama administration's first substantive attempt to address the Postal Service's fiscal woes, the budget would allow the agency to pay $4 billion less toward future retiree health benefits than otherwise required. The mail agency would have to pay about $1.5 billion of those costs in fiscal 2012 and make up the difference in later years.

The budget proposal also adjusts the size of the annual payments by taking into account the size of the workforce, which has shrunk to about 583,000 full-time employees since the law passed in 2006.