Postal Service: Study backs consolidation to Richmond

A U.S. Postal Service study indicates some operations should be moved from the Albemarle County Airport Road mail processing and distribution facility to a larger plant near Richmond.

Postal Service officials announced Friday that the study results, conducted in August and September, support consolidation.

“The study results support consolidating some mail processing operations that are currently being performed at the Charlottesville [plant] by taking advantage of available processing capacity at the Richmond [plant] in order to increase efficiency and improve productivity,” postal officials said in a statement.

The local facility has 181 employees.

Postal Service officials will hold a public meeting at 7 p.m. Nov. 18 to discuss the proposal. The meeting will take place at the Martin Luther King Jr. Performing Arts Center at Charlottesville High School.

A summary of the proposal, the meeting agenda and presentation materials will be made available at the postal service’s Web site, http://www.usps.com, one week prior to the meeting.

The postal service, reeling from a bad economy and competition from package services, lost $2.4 billion in the third quarter of its fiscal 2009. The year ended Oct. 1 and preliminary figures indicate the service could be as much as $7 billion in the red.

“With the deep decline in mail volume due to current economic conditions, the postal service has an excess of employees and equipment in some mail processing operations,” the announcement said.

The postal service is trying to cut $6 billion a year, including slashing personnel costs by the equivalent of 57,000 jobs. Other actions to save money include building no new facilities, hiring and salary freezes and closing or selling postal facilities across the country.

Earlier this year, the postal service negotiated an agreement with two employee unions to offer financial incentives to retire or resign before the end of the fiscal year. The agreements affect employees in processing plants such as Albemarle’s but do not apply to mail carriers, postal officials said.

About 30,000 employees, including some in the local facility, are eligible for the incentives. The plan could save the postal service as much as $500 million next year.

The Richmond area plant, near Sandstone, opened in September. It features upgrades to increase efficiency and lower costs, officials said. Duties that were once done by hand will be automated.

The facility includes a Flat Sequencing System, a football-field-sized machine that can sort flat pieces of mail at a rate of 16,500 pieces per hour, according to the postal service Web site.