Holidays bigger concern for post office
At least 39 blue U.S. Postal Service mailboxes were removed from around Columbus, and reportedly eight highspeed, letter-sorting machines and one “flat-sorter“for larger envelopes were removed from the local mail processing center here — and some were thrown out.
The Postal Service has generally been mum about these changes. Only after public outrage and concerns about the impact on absentee ballot requests and mail-in voting did the USPS respond by putting back some mailboxes and saying no further changes would come until after the election.
Despite the actions, officials with the American Postal Workers Union in Columbus and Ohio told The Dispatch they don’t believe the moves pose a major risk to mail-in voting for the Nov. 3 general election.
Of greater concern, they said, is the impact the changes will have on the annual holiday rush when the Postal Service deals with its peak mail volumes.
“Mailboxes come and go,” said Jennifer Sigmon, president of Postal Workers Local 232, with about 1,000 members in Franklin and Licking counties.
But over the last six to eight weeks, according to the union, eight highspeed, bar code-reading letter sorters were removed from the USPS Columbus Processing & Distribution Center located off Agler Road on the Northeast Side. The plan was to remove five more, a sorting capacity reduction of about 27% for the Columbus processing center.
The Postal Service initially said the processing equipment was taken offline to be relocated to other places where it is needed more.
But the Postal Service’s explanation has come under question and criticism from both the public and Congress. Democratic legislators have questioned whether the moves were an attempt to hurt Postal Service operations, not only impacting mail-in voting but leading to privatization. Some equipment was dismantled, damaged and/or thrown away, critics say.
“Some of (the bar code readers) were thrown in the dumpster” at the Columbus mail processing facility, Sigmon confirmed.
A Washington Post graphic indicated that Columbus was the nation’s hardest hit by the Postal Service’s processing center changes.
But because each of the 40 machines currently remaining can sort between 25,000 and 35,000 letters per hour, the Columbus processing center “can handle the balance of the election,” said Steve Charles, president of the Ohio Postal Workers Union, which represents workers at smaller post offices around the state.
The election generates only a single letter for each mail-in voter, and comes at a time when mail volume has plunged due to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic downturn.
In its April through June fiscal quarter, the Postal Service reported “marketing mail” volume plunged nationally by 6.4 billion pieces, or 36.4%, while first-class mail volume fell by 1.1 billion pieces, or 8.4%.
"They were taking those machines out because the mail volume has dropped," Charles said. “So there's less mail to work."
About 5.5 million people voted in Ohio during the 2016 presidential election, many in-person. Mail-in voting is allowed over a wider period, though absentee ballots must be postmarked by the day before the election in order to be counted.
More concerning to the union is what will happen in the run-up to Christmas, when first-class mail volume nationally can hit 2.5 billion pieces in a single week.
“Our position is (Postal Service leadership) didn't even give it a chance (to rebound before removing equipment),” Sigmon said. “What happens if the volume comes back up?”
As for mailboxes, both union officials said they don’t have as good a handle on what’s going on with them recently. But The Dispatch was able to determine from official lists and residents’ comments that dozens were recently removed, though it appears an undetermined number have been returned.
Most were removed from Downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods in late spring or early summer. People who live or work close to them attributed the removal to security precautions taken during the protests against racial injustice and police brutality sparked by the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Several months later, the demonstrations have become smaller and feature fewer confrontations between police and protesters, but the boxes are still missing, and people who live and work close to Downtown now wonder if they’ll ever see the boxes returned.
A Postal Service representative said boxes are marked 90 days in advance of removal, but Downtown residents and office workers said some boxes disappeared with no warning.
Benjamin Mckean, who lives in
German Village, walked to a familiar blue box at the corner of Livingston Avenue and Grant Street on Aug. 16 to mail a letter, only to find it gone.
“At no point was there ever any indication that the mailbox would be removed, so it was disconcerting to find it gone, Mckean said.
Amy Thompson, who lives on the 100 block of North High Street, said nearly all of the mailboxes near her Downtown condo disappeared early this summer.
“It was pretty much overnight they were gone with no warning,” she said.
A supervisor at the building Thompson lives in initially attributed the removal to the protests, but Thompson said she was later told the boxes were removed in connection with Postal Service budget cuts.
“I used them two or three times a week,” Thompson said. “That’s how I communicate with my mother. She’s in a memory care facility and she’s on lockdown” because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Thompson said she can drive to the post office, but noted that not everyone who lives Downtown has a car.
Julie Feasel, who works for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, said the box in front of her office on Third Street was removed in late June.
“If there were notices posted, we didn’t see them,” she said.
A Postal Service representative said only underperforming boxes were removed, but Feasel said the blue box in front of her office saw frequent use from the workers in her office, the surrounding buildings and others who work or live Downtown. bbush@dispatch.com @reporterbush pcooley@dispatch.com @Patrickacooley