Postal cuts already affect Mid-south

Three processing facilities closing

WASHINGTON — The struggling U. S. Postal Service has been steadily reducing its operations across the Mid-South.

Last February, it announced that postal processing facilities in Jonesboro, Ark., Jackson, Tenn., and Tupelo, Miss., would be closed and that their volume would be consolidated in Memphis.

The Tupelo move was completed Jan. 26, according to Postal Service spokesman David Walton in Louisville. The move from Jonesboro is expected to occur on Feb. 16, and the closure of the Jackson operation is anticipated in June, Walton said.

Walton did not immediately have figures on net jobs lost or gained from those actions.

Those consolidations were part of a decision to close 223 postal processing facilities around the country that was expected, along with other efficiencies, to save $20 billion.

In recent years, the Postal Service has closed or reduced the hours of operation at about 13,000 post offices around the country.

In 2011, the Postal Service said it was considering closing six post offices in Shelby County, including a Downtown facility at Peabody Place, but no final decision has occurred.

In addition to those facilities, post offices in Arkabutla and Lake Cormorant in DeSoto County and Clarkedale and Turrell in Crittenden County, were targeted.

A study on closing the Jett Cove Annex processing facility in Memphis, which at the time employed 85 people, resulted in last year’s decision not to do so.

The move to end regular Saturday delivery, beginning in August, is expected to result in job cuts, but Postal Service officials were unable to say how many.