Blue Stone Press, March 6, 2015 , Page 

Why does the mail

take so long?
Jillian Nadiak
BSP Reporter
Due to the closing of the Newburgh mail
distribution center, not only were 360 jobs
lost according to a Fiscal Policy Institute Report, butwhen you mail aletter
from your town to the town next door, it
nowtakes a bit of a detour.
When mail is dropped off at a local post
office or picked up from your mailbox, it is
processed according to particular ranges
of zip codes that identify which processing plant to be sent too. If the mail is local,
than it is then collected from local post
offices and then brought to the Kingston
post office in NY. Its journey doesnt end
in Kingston though. Instead of taking its
normal trip to Newburgh, it is nowtransported to the USPS Albany Processing
and Distribution Center, which serves as a
processing hub.
This has had an effect on many businesses in our area including the Blue
Stone Press.In the process of our day
to day business we hear that there are a
lot of misunderstandings and concerns
about how much time the mail is taking to
get from business to business, residence
toresidencelocally, said publisher of the
BlueStone Press Lori Childers.Theres
a misunderstanding about how far the
mail has to travel to get to one of our local
hamlets.
With the price of the stamp increasing
three cents in January, it would be hoped
that a letter would travel faster. In addition to increasing the number of days your
mail is en route, it puts a heavier burden
on all the facilities at a local levelthatcant
get the influx of mail out the door until
much later in the day,said Rosendale
resident, Jay Galione, director of the documentaryGone Postal.Letter carriers are
regularly out after dark, in icy conditions,
sorting through mail while hustling from
door to door. The risk of injury increases.
And when you are injured on the job at
the Postal Service you are challenged to
prove it wasnt your fault. With all of these
increasing pressures the morale within the
organization suffers and the stress rises.
With the advancement of technology,
an old-fashioned letter is hard to come
by now-a-days. Businesses encourage
paperless billing (for the environment and
for cost-saving sake)so now even our bills
can be paid online. Even our junk mail has
taken the tech savvy approach thus finding its way into our spam boxes-stamps
unnecessary.
As of Jan. 2015, the postal service

MAJEK

FurniturE

changed its First-Class mail service standards, which has led to change in delivery
speed we are witnessing today. Effecting
roughly 14 billion pieces of the total volume (or 9percent) and up to 16 percentof
First-Class mail, local delivery now takes
two days instead of one.Sending mail
anywhere else in the country will take up
to three days.
The connection between the plant
closures and service standards is complex, said Steve Hutkins, from Rhinebeck founder of savethepostoffice.com
and literature professor at New York
University.But the gist of it is simply that
if the Postal Service has more time to process the mail (basically an extra day), they
need fewer plants (partly because theres
now enough time for the mail to travel
further, partly because sorting machines
can be used more hours per day, etc.).
First-Class mail consists of general
correspondence, bill payments, greeting
cards and the like.In the past 10 years,
total volume has declined by more than
26percent First-Class Mail volume has
declined by 35percent, and single-piece
First-Class Mail has declined more than
50percent. according to the United States
Postal Services website.
According to a page detailing the USPSs
future network,stamped letter mail volume has been decreasing for a decade and
will continue to decline.With numbers
like this, it would make sense that a reform
was needed.
Though the postal service is a government system,it receives no funding from
taxes. It operates solely on the revenues
from the sales and services it provides.
When paired with the decrease in firstclass mail, this led to a recorded $26 billion lossover the past three years.
In 2012, a business strategy called Post
Plan was put into effect. Post Plan is
designed to keep the nations smaller post
offices open for business; not close them,
said George B. Flood, spokesperson for
the USPS in the northeast area.This has
led to the modification of retail window
hours to match customer use.
Although First-Class mail seems to be
taking this reformthe hardest, there is
no need to worry about our packages.
According tothe Key Facts on Network
Rationalization press release inNov.
2014, Package Services and Priority Mail
willnot be affected and will be delivered
based on current service standards.
For more information visit gonepostalfilm.com or savethepostoffice.com.

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