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The US Postal Service is considering folding the operations of the North Bay Processing and Distribution Center in Petaluma, which opened in 1986, into the Oakland Processing and Distribution Center.
A public meeting was held on the proposal on Nov. 16 in Petaluma, and community members can still comment on the proposal by sending written comments to Theresa Lambino at the US Postal Service’s San Francisco District, P.O. Box 193000, San Francisco, CA 94188-3000.
Postcards must be postmarked by Saturday, Dec. 3.
A Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/StopTheClosure.NorthBay, has been set up in opposition to the proposed closure.
Several people posting on that page said they had received little or no notice about the proposal.
Postal service spokesman James Wigdel said the proposed consolidation was announced back in September. He said the postal service doesn’t do a blanket mailing, but does inform the unions, employees, members of Congress for the area, local mayors and the media.
“It’s an established protocol that’s used across the county,” he said.
Earlier this year, the US Postal Service consolidated the North Bay center’s originating mail processing operations into Oakland’s as the result of a 2010 area mail processing study, Wigdel said.
Another area mail processing study conducted earlier this year on the remainder of the Petaluma facility’s operations led the postal service to conclude that it could realize a savings of about $2.5 million a year by moving all operations to the Oakland processing center, said Wigdel.
“In order to do that, we will have to change our service standards,” he said.
Currently, overnight delivery in local areas ranges between one and three days. Wigdel said that would change to two to three days.
The consolidation study going on with the Petaluma center is part of a nationwide effort, said Wigdel. “We’re trying to become efficient.”
There are about 500 such facilities nationwide, said Wigdel, and the US Postal Service is proposing to close about 250 of them.
“The reason that we’re looking at that is our volume is going down dramatically and has since 2006,” which Wigdel said was the postal service’s peak year for volume, with 214 billion pieces of mail.
The postal service’s nationwide system is designed to process and deliver 300 billion pieces of mail annually, but in fiscal year 2011 it only handled 168 billion pieces of mail, Wigdel said.
That’s because more people are becoming competent in using the Internet and paying bills online, said Wigdel, adding that the poor economy is causing businesses to put out fewer mailers.
“We lost just over $5 billion last year,” he said. “We don’t see us being in the black anytime soon.”
That loss would have been $10.5 billion if Congress hadn’t allowed the postal service to put off its required payment into its employees’ retirement plan. Even so, Wigdel said the US Postal Service has stated it can’t make the payment this month, when it’s required.
Wigdel said that once the comments period closes at the end of the day Dec. 3, comments and letters from the public will be evaluated and forwarded to the postal service’s Washington, DC headquarters.
He said headquarters hasn’t stated when it will make a decision, but one is expected early in 2012, Wigdel said.
No employees would be laid off; Wigdel said they will be transferred to other positions in surrounding areas, in accordance with union contracts.
It’s not yet been determined what would be done with the facility itself, Wigdel said.
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