USPS proposes streamlining review process for closing post offices

The U.S. Postal Service has proposed a review process that officials say could help expedite decisions on facility closures and result in the shuttering of thousands of locations this year.

Postal employees work out of about 32,000 locations nationwide, but with a growing number of customers buying stamps and packaging material at pharmacies, groceries and office supply stores, officials said Thursday that it is time to scale back.

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“We feel it’s what we have to do to remain the organization that we are,” said Dean Granholm, USPS vice president for post office operations. “Any retailer in the business is going through the changes that we are.”

USPS has closed about 300 locations in the past six months using what postal officials describe as a disorganized process that often dragged on for years. The computerized system announced Thursday would allow top officials in Washington to begin reviewing sites by the summer and assess a location’s feasibility within 138 days — a sharply shorter period of review, Granholm said.

“This is not an effort to shutter all of our post offices,” he said. Officials plan to review about 3,000 sites by June. Reviewing a location does not mean that its closure is inevitable, Granholm said.

The proposed changes, submitted this week for publication in the Federal Register, are open to public comment for the next two months. If the changes are enacted, Granholm said, USPS would focus on whether to keep open thousands of smaller branches and stations located in city centers or far-flung rural towns that may get less traffic than nearby post offices.

If a location is chosen for closure, Granholm said, letter carriers would deliver formal notices to affected customers and give them two months to respond. He said concerned customers could appeal the decision to the Postal Regulatory Commission, which would have up to 120 days to review the location’s fate. Affected communities would retain their Zip code.

In an interview Thursday, PRC Chairman Ruth Goldway promised to carefully review the proposal but seemed pleased that USPS is preparing new national standards. Any wholesale review “should be a plan that incorporates community concerns and the nature of individual communities,” she said.

The changes present a new source of tension among USPS and postal regulators and union leaders, who fear that postal bosses are trying to bypass the regulation process and quickly make operational changes without proper consultation with customers.

“It appears that the Postal Service is moving towards our opinion in some ways and away from it in other ways,” Goldway said, reiterating her concern for a customer’s right to appeal any closure.

Granholm defended the plans, saying he expected regulators to appreciate the new appeals process. Besides, he said, “I feel we have the authority to change our rules” without regulator approval.

USPS anticipates losing about $7 billion during the fiscal year ending in September. It announced plans last week to eliminate 7,500 postmaster and administrative positions, on top of the 105,000 full-time positions cut by attrition in the past two years.