Bulletin photos by Andrew McFarland

Mike Powers’ audience listened, but didn’t like what they heard, about planned Postal Service closings of mail-processing centers and other cutbacks.

Postal center closings outlined
N.E. publishers put off by
planned Post Office cuts

By Yoel Melles
Bulletin Correspondent

Changes proposed to salvage the U.S. Postal Service from its projected $10-billion debt could also make mail delivery more problematic for newspapers in New England and elsewhere.

Mike Powers, manager of the Northeast area of the Postal Service, discussed those changes to the Postal Service’s operation Friday, Feb. 10, during the New England Newspaper and Press Association’s winter convention. Those attending the workshop expressed their displeasure with the changes.

The Postal Service has more processing centers and offices than it really needs; the number of processing centers has risen from 473 in 2006 to 487 in 2011, Powers said. The Postal Service had no debt in 2006, Powers said.

Powers noted that there are “69 offices just in Cape Cod,” to lend a New England perspective to the overabundance of Postal Service properties.

After informing the audience of the financial straits with which the Postal Service must deal, Powers began to describe the “proposed future network,” as he referred to it.

That plan revolves around closing many of the less profitable processing centers while establishing hubs to which the mail will be sent and from which it will then be directed. The hubs will absorb mail from the ZIP codes of the closed processing centers in its area.

Without those closings, the Postal Service could be in danger of reaching its $15-billion debt ceiling, Powers said.

Because there are too many processing centers for the number of employees, not only will the closings eliminate excess capacity, they will help Postal Service fully use its workforce, which should lead to significant annual saving, Powers said.

Those in the audience had a different view of the proposed shrinkage, however.

Audience members, many of them publishers of New England newspapers, voiced their dissatisfaction with the Postal Service’s operation. Some complained that it was already hard enough to get in touch with their local postmasters and that, with the closings, it will be even more difficult.

Others said they have read complaints from subscribers who said they received their newspaper three weeks after publication. That problem could be enhanced by the Postal Service’s proposed shift of mail from overnight delivery to two- to three-day delivery, although Powers noted the possibility of overnight delivery for mail entered earlier in the day.

Most audience members agreed that there would be one major problem that would be hard to overcome: the distance they will have to travel to one of the new hubs. Some publishers in Maine, for example, could be forced to travel more than 100 miles to deliver their newspapers to the closest hub.

Yoel Melles is an undergraduate student in the Northeastern University School of Journalism.

POSTED 4/19/12