Postal facility set to close

The American Postal Workers union fights on, but plans are moving ahead to close the United States Postal Service mail processing center in Petaluma in July.

“Nothing is imminent,” said Postal Service spokesman James Wigdel, “but we will be completing the final phase of moving mail operations to San Francisco in July 2015.”

The retail section and customer service of the Petaluma center on North McDowell Boulevard will remain open after the mail center closes.

“A decision on what will happen to the building has not been made,” Wigdel said.

Petaluma and Eureka are two of 82 Postal Service mail centers targeted for closure across the country. While Petaluma’s mail has already been routed to San Francisco, Eureka’s mail center is now in Medford, Ore. The Oregon site is 193 miles from Eureka, a near four-hour drive away.

“We’re working full-time on keeping all of the centers open,” said American Postal Workers Redwood Empire representative Valerie Schropp. “We’ve put all of our other work aside. We’ve heard different dates for closure . . . July, October. There are different dates floating around out there.”

There are 200 union employees in Petaluma who will be offered work at other mail centers. That work, in many cases, would require Petaluma residents to leave the local mail center to commute to Oakland or San Francisco.

“A year ago, they set out to route Petaluma mail to Oakland,” Schropp said. “They said that would be cheaper, but it didn’t work out. They sent it to San Francisco instead, but there are still times that mail is sent back to the Petaluma center. The Postal Service is sticking by a study that showed sending mail to Oakland would save money.”

Wigdel mentioned no such problems regarding the transition from Petaluma to other mail centers.

“Customers should notice very little effect on letter delivery and no effect with package delivery,” he said of the pending July 15 closure of the Petaluma center.

Schropp said the Postal Service eased its own standard in order to meet what the union insists is a slower delivery process.

“Now they’re saying mail will reach its destination in no more than three days. It used to be a one- or two- day process,” Schropp said.

Schropp said the union is asking Petaluma residents who receive mail three or more days after it is postmarked to send that opened mail’s envelope to the union at P.O. Box 750174, Petaluma, 94975.

That proof that mail is slow arriving locally is key to the union strategy.

“If we get mail that shows it takes longer to arrive, it will help make our case to keep the Petaluma mail center open,” she said.

(Contact Ted Sillanpaa at ted.sil lanpaa@arguscouri er.com)