By Katie Psotka
Western Herald
(Chyn Wey Lee/Western Herald) Randy Barnes shows his protest to the consolidation of postal service during Tuesday night public input meeting on Area Mail Processing Study(AMP) at the Fetzer Center.
The sorting of postal mail in Kalamazoo is in limbo as the United States Postal Service plans to consolidate and thus outsource Kalamazoo’s processing program to Grand Rapids.
A public form was held Tuesday night Western Michigan University’s Fetzer Center regarding the change and revealed a strong public opinion against consolidation, though it also posed a fair and solid argument in favor of it.
The removal of the Postal Processing Center from Kalamazoo, which sorts much of Southwestern Michigan’s incoming and outgoing mail, would result in its consolidation with the Postal Processing Center of Grand Rapids.
A final decision will not be made for a period of 60 to 90 days.
“It’s our goal to maintain existing standards of delivery service,” said Charles Howe, United States Postal Service Greater Michigan District representative.
Ideally, the loss of Kalamazoo’s Postal Processing Center will not impact delivery times or have any negative consequences upon the quality of service, he said.
However, a number of recent factors, such as new technologies and the current state of the economy, have led people to use the Postal Service less, bringing the amount of mail the Postal Service sees down.
“The mailing environment has changed,” Howe said. “Changes in the way people communicate have changed the ways Americans use mail.”
Howe explained that the USPS must change with the times in order to continue to be efficient, which, in this case, means the merging of the Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids Postal Processing Centers. Howe said the Kalamazoo center is no longer needed as a consequence of the 37.7 percent decrease in mail volume the Postal Service has seen since 2000.
All together the Postal Service estimated that it could save about $2.6 million if the consolidation in implemented.
Despite the proposed changes to the system will be undetectable to a majority of those who utilize its services on a daily basis, many are still in opposition. One of the biggest concerns is that discontinuing the use of the Postal Processing Center in Kalamazoo would ultimately mean the loss of an estimated 40 jobs.
Ellen Carpenter, a member of the American Postal Workers Union, AFL-CIO and worker at the Kalamazoo Processing Center, addressed a multitude of other existing problems.
“The USPS should be marketing their business much more than they are and they should be focusing on good service and customer relations instead of removing work from Kalamazoo,” she said.
“The move they are planning to make will virtually eliminate the Kalamazoo postmark. All mail from this area will be on a truck for an hour up to Grand Rapids, be postmarked Grand Rapids, then about 50-60 percent of it will be coming back this way to be delivered. It all looks good on paper but when you factor in transportation expenses and delays due to weather and construction on [US-]131, the reality isn’t as pretty.”
In addition, a big controversy that occurred within the public forum was the sentiment that most felt about the United States Postal Service being too vague about their information and withholding facts from the public.
“The real problem that I have is that the USPS is withholding the information that they used to make this decision,” Carpenter continued. “They keep referring to a study and the statistics but they will not share that information with the employees or the unions and they did not share that information with the public tonight. They showed a little generic video and PowerPoint but gave us no real details about what jobs could be lost and when that might happen.”
Natasha Allen, a junior at WMU, expressed her concerns regarding the loss of jobs that is an unfortunate yet inevitable consequence if the changes to the functions of the Processing Centers are approved.
“I’m aware that the recession and a severe budget shortfall is causing the Michigan legislature to re-evaluate what needs to be cut, but I’m extremely disappointed that they feel the need to cut 40 badly needed jobs in Kalamazoo,” she said. “I sincerely hope that the legislature will remedy this situation without cutting jobs.”
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