The days when a letter could travel from one end of Bend to another without physically leaving the zip code appear to be numbered.
According to a letter from Oregon Postmaster to Bend City Manager Eric King, the Post Office has concluded that it makes financial sense to shutter the Bend mail sorting facility on Fourth Street. In a summary of the proposal that was attached to the letter from Postmaster Nathan Leigh, the agency says it could save about $2.1 million annually by moving mail sorting operations from Bend to Portland. That means a letter mailed from Butler Market to an address on Reed Market will have to make the journey over the pass and back to in order to travel a net distance of less than 10 miles. Such are the realities of the modern economics of mail service in the digital era.
The savings come at a price, however.
According to the post office, 17 workers would be displaced if the facility were shuttered. It’s not clear how many of them would be offered other jobs within the agency.
Even with the loss of the local facility, local customers wouldn’t see major disruptions, according to the USPS. “Retail and other services” would be maintained at the location and mail delivery would still happen within a two-to-three-day window.
The Post Office is planning to give local customers a chance to weigh on in the plan before it is finalized. The agency has set a Dec. 27 meeting at 7 p.m. the Riverhouse in Bend to solicit public input. Customers can also submit written comments up two weeks after the meeting. Comments can be mailed to
Manager, Customer and Industry Contact
PO Box 4029
Portland, OR 97208-4029
This article appears in Dec 8-14, 2011.
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2.1 million saved… I can’t argue that. However, 17 Bend jobs gone? We need those.
Also, I don’t want to wait for my netflix to make it over the pass and back. The post office may be inadvertently forcing me to watch awful redbox rentals.
This is a ridiculous move. No wonder the USPS is broke, making decisions like this. We are already isolated enough over here without town mail being sent across the mountains and back to go a mile or two. Mail service needs to be taken out of the hands of the government and given to a private enterprise who can show them how to make a business flourish.
USPS is not a government agency, even though it can not do anything without congressional approval. Did you know that the USPS puts millions back into the general fund in support of the US economy. It is this burden, which they can not remove that is causing it to fail. By the way, It costs less than 50 cents to send a letter to Guam, or Alaska, or Hawaii. Try getting that bargin with private industry
Given the local sorters’ aggravating habit of shredding publications in the machines, we shouldn’t cry too hard at the loss of the local center. The main hurt will be to Netflix and its dwindling DVD customer base.
On the other hand, it might be reasonable to argue that centralizing things in Portland would make it even easier for sorters to shred our mail.