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Impact at local post office unknown in effort to cut costs

Photo

Photo by Dan Lassiter

Postal employee Terry Bodner prepares to distribute "bumps" to carriers at the Janesville Post Office. Bumps are sections of daily routes that are not delivered for a variety of reasons, such as a carrier taken ill during a route.

JANESVILLE — Janesville Postmaster Jon Buchholz isn’t sure how a proposal to drop Saturday mail delivery would affect the local post office.

“Until they tell me exactly how things will change I won’t know the impact,’’ he said.

“We were told things were being presented to Congress by the postmaster general, who gave us a brief outline without specifics. And that just said they were considering alternative things to try and reduce costs,’’ he said.

Only one thing is for sure, Buchholz said, “There’s a lot of change coming.’’

The U.S. Postal Service is renewing its push to drop Saturday delivery—and plans a rate increase—in an effort to stave off a projected $7 billion loss this year.

Without drastic action the agency could face a cumulative loss of $238 billion over 10 years, Postmaster General John Potter said in releasing a series of consultant reports on agency operations and its outlook.

Change won’t happen rapidly, said Karen Cronin, customer relations coordinator for the Madison Processing and Distribution Center that processes mail for 155 post offices in Southwest Wisconsin.

“The request the Postal Service has made to delivery frequency won’t happen quickly. That change will have to be approved by the Postal Regulatory Commission, then we’ll get a ruling from Congress, then it will take another six months to put in place. But we’re hoping to do it next year due to current financial problems,’’ she said.

The Janesville Post Office already has had cuts, Buchholz said.

Since last November, the number of Janesville delivery routes has been reduced from 49 to 43, he said.

And although there is no official hiring freeze, Buchholz said nobody new has been hired in Janesville for a long time.

“We take transfers—shifting people as opposed to hiring people,’’ he said.

Even though there was talk of delivering Milton’s mail out of Janesville last year, that still has not happened.

“I have not heard anymore about that,” Buchholz said.

Although there have been no layoffs in Janesville and Buchholz doesn’t expect any, people who retire sometimes aren’t replaced.

“Once somebody retires, we evaluate and for the most part are not backfilling.’’

When three people retired earlier this year, none of their positions was filled, Buchholz said.

SURVEY SAYS …

Among 860 people who had responded to an unscientific poll at GazettExtra.com as of Wednesday afternoon, 68 percent said cutting Saturday mail delivery would have no impact on them.

Among the others, 22 percent said the cut would have “some” impact, and 8 percent said it would be a “large” impact.

Comments include:

“You can eliminate all Saturday service for both residential and business.”

—Macdaddy

"Do it. Cut the fat.”

—dub190

“Though I can order stamps online, I still ship packages requiring hand-delivery to the post office. Saturdays are when I conduct this business because noon hours are out … the lines at the post office are ridiculous, and they close before I get out of work.’’

—rish_Mafia78

“The postal service has been reduced to a carrier of ‘junk mail’ only. Each day I walk to my mailbox and remove the contents, taking it directly to the trashcan and depositing same. It will be refreshing not to have to do it on Saturday.”

— Devilsadvocate

“Paying bills electronically is awesome. You don't have to worry about running to the post office to get stamps.”

— whybesad

“If eventually they start cutting out days of the week, then my bills come later. Not that I miss getting bills, but I'm concerned it will give me less time to get a check written and get it out, then without another day of the week for the mail to travel, does my payment get to its destination in time.”

— packfan66

“I still believe they could cut their staff in half save half the fossil fuels they use and make a profit if they delivered mail every other day with each carrier having 2 routes. I don't need to get JUNK mail every day.”

— troyjanss