Although there was a rumor this past week that one or two local post offices were to be closed and consolidated with Wake Forest’s, that is not true.
“We are not closing any post offices at this time,” Monica M. Coachman, the media spokesperson for North Carolina for the U.S. Postal Service, said Tuesday.
However, she said, there will be some internal changes in the Youngsville and Wake Forest post offices.
“The carriers at Youngsville Post Office will be moved to Wake Forest Post Office as part of a Delivery Unit Optimization (DUO),” Coachman wrote in a lengthy email after the telephone call from the Gazette.
“DUO involves relocating letter carriers out of local post offices, stations and/or branches and consolidating them into larger, centralized delivery offices or hubs,” she wrote. “The ‘hubs’ (or larger offices) have excess space inside and out and can accommodate increased personnel, workload and transportation. Centrally locating mail carriers increases operational efficiency and saves the organization money.”
Coachman wrote that DUO will not affect the retail and other services at the Youngsville post office which faces N.C. 96/South Cross Street but the entrance/exit is on East Persimmon Street.
“This includes window services and PO Boxes; ZIP Codes are not affected by DUO; and mail delivery is not affected by DUO. Some deliveries could be slightly earlier or later depending on the specific routes, but postal carriers’ assignments and areas of delivery will not change due to DUO. Employees will report to a different location at the beginning of work and after completion of their routes. That is the only difference, and should be totally transparent to customers.”
Youngsville Mayor Fonzie Flowers said the Gazette’s call to him about the change was the first he had heard and that he wanted to call post office officials to learn more. “I want to know how it impacts our citizens.”
Coachman also addressed the reason for the consolidation. “As I mentioned during our phone conversation, the changes USPS is making have to do with our well-documented financial situation. It is our hope that when Congress reconvenes, there will be some movement on postal reform legislation and we will get some much-needed financial relief.”
And, “I hope that helps alleviate concern on the part of our customers and your readers.”
The rumor grew because the Wake Forest post office moved three customer service boxes for stamped mail that had been on a separate drive at the side of the building, repositioning two of them in the existing parking lot, and is in the process of building an additional parking lot. That new parking lot will apparently accommodate the additional mail delivery vans and trucks when the Youngsville carriers move to Wake Forest, which probably will be in the next few weeks.
The postal reform legislations Coachman referred to, Senate Bill 1486, the Postal Reform Act of 2014, would change some of the requirements of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, with the most impact being the requirement the USPS pre-fund all its employee benefit obligations. Before 2006, the USPS had a pay-as-you-go model for retiree health care funding.
The bill currently in the U.S. Congress would also permit the USPS to reduce mail delivery from six days per week to five, allow it to phase out direct delivery to business customers and transfer some retirement contributions back to the USPS.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates there would be a net savings of $17 billion from 2015 through 2024.
Locally, the USPS has initiated another cost-saving measure which is requiring new subdivisions to install master postal boxes in central locations rather than delivery to individual boxes on the streets. The Wake Forest Planning Department and local developers are still working out all the requirements and specifications for this change.
