A skyrocketing suicide rate, rampant drug use and the sudden failure of Washington State residents to pay their taxes has followed on the heels of the shocking decision by postal officials to do away with the long cherished “Olympia WA” postmark.

OK- enough sarcasm. But how else can you respond to the bizarre editorial in today’s “Olympian” “Tacoma-Olympian”?

Consider the second paragraph: “The battle to retain the local postmark has been waged – and lost. It’s time for South Sound residents to live with the results and make the best of an unfortunate situation.”

Can you imagine having to live with that? I mean really live with it day after day without totally losing it? CAN YOU?!?!?!

“The emotional attachment to something as artificial as a postmark is amazing.” I’ll say! What is it about people in Olympia that they seem to have this creepy attachment to something that gets sprayed on a few of their letters by an ink jet?

“When postal authorities announced consolidation plans last November, there was a fair amount of public outrage.” No mention of what the death toll was, but you can just imagine!

But just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does: “Postal officials did make one concession. They gave Olympia and Tacoma a joint postmark. The community was led to believe it would be an “Olympia-Tacoma” postmark, but it ended up being a “Tacoma-Olympia” postmark. That’s like pouring salt in the wound to postal employees who waged a valiant – albeit unsuccessful – campaign to save Olympia’s postmark.”

Bastards!!!!!

And if you don’t think that losing your postmark is the death knell for a city, consider this: “Had the city lost its postmark entirely, Olympia would have joined Annapolis, Md., and Carson City, Nev., as one of three state capitals without one.”

Notice anything missing, Vermonters? Yes, that’s right- Montpelier is SO forgotten that it doesn’t even make the list of state capitals that don’t have a postmark!

Not until the very end does the editorial get around to mentioning how the consolidation is actually working. The biggest fears the State Capital of Washington State had when this all started was that mail from the state government would be hopelessly delayed. So how’s that going?

“The biggest South Sound mail customer, of course, is the state of Washington. Consolidated Mail Services, a division of the state Department of General Administration that handles 100,000 pieces of state mail a day, has spent months preparing for the shift to Tacoma processing. So far, the planning has paid off, as it has been a smooth transition.”

Oh…

Well, never mind!

Postal promises must be kept – The Olympian The Tacoma-Olympian- Olympia Tacoma-Olympia, Washington

Newspaper coverage of the various plant consolidation controversies has been sloppy, but this story from the Akron Beacon Journal takes the cake. According to ace reporter Ed Meyer, the plan to shift mail processing operations from Canton to Akron was “put together by the Bush administration and the Government Accountability Office”. Uh oh.

The rest of the story is pretty much what we’ve heard before- the APWU says shifting the work will delay the mail, and the Mayor of Canton says the city will lose its identity if it loses its postmark. (I’ll resist the urge to make a smart remark about what the “identity” of Canton, OH might consist of currently.)

The idea does sound pretty far-fetched- after all, it is all of 23 miles from Canton to Akron! Imagine that! How could they possible get mail from one city to the other (and back!) in less than a week?

Canton letters could get loopy

The following commentary is by Clint Burleson, President of the Olympia, Washington local of the American Postal Workers Union:

There are plenty of problems with the Postal Service decision to move the cancellation, postmark and sorting of the outgoing mail from Olympia to Tacoma.  But now the Postal Service has admitted that they have possible plans to sort the outgoing Olympia and Tacoma mail in Seattle, which will further increase the problems.   Read the rest of this entry »

According to the local TV station, the city of Rockford Illinois must be sitting on the edge of its collective seat this morning. WIFR reports that the “fate” of the Rockford processing plant will be announced today. That may or may not be the case, but the story at least provided a local politician with another opportunity to milk the alleged controversy. Congressman Don Manzullo is quoted as saying: “When you start off with the premise that Rockford has probably the finest cancellation service in the country, you can only come to one conclusion…that it should stay open”.

“The finest cancellation service in the country”? What does that even mean? No smudges?

Postal Service Announcement to Come Monday

Update: It’s official!

The finely crafted Rockford cancellation lives! Good for the employees! Having been through a number of boneheaded, arbitrary reorganizations myself, I can sympathize with the workers who would have ended up moving to other jobs and locations.

I can’t help thinking that management missed the boat on this one, though. Its clumsy PR efforts allowed the APWU and local politicians to set the agenda and monopolize the discussion. Maybe the Rockford move made sense, and maybe it didn’t- we’ll never know now. It certainly doesn’t bode well for the future of the USPS’s network redesign plans.

That seems to be a more accurate headline for the story from Texas about the possible consolidation of the McAllen processing facility into Corpus Christi than “Potential Postal Service reorganization could delay local delivery”.

The only indication that “local delivery” could be affected in any way by moving the outgoing processing comes from a local APWU official who claims that “a local resident mailing a first-class letter to another address in the same town or in a neighboring town could expect delivery to take an additional day or two”.

Really? Unfortunately, the reporter didn’t bother to ask why that would be the case. The USPS said it wouldn’t be the case, but the paper went with the union official’s assertion for it’s headline.

And the worst fear of any McAllen resident is mentioned: the plan could “replace local postmarks with the Corpus Christi postmark and delay postmarking altogether”. (What does “delay postmarking altogether” mean?!).

I’ve got no idea whether or not this particular move makes sense, but let’s be honest- this is complicated, but it ain’t rocket science. Mail moves every day between these two facilities, and I’d be willing to bet it doesn’t take two or three days to travel the 160 miles. The transportation is a known factor. So are the volumes of mail currently processed in both facilities. You don’t need a supercomputer to do the math and decide whether or not there’s at least a theoretical possibility of moving the operation.

That’s when it starts to get messy- sure, maybe you can do it, but does it make sense? Do you actually save money? Do you have any negative impacts on service? Those are the questions, among others, that the AMP study has to answer.

But that’s not something that makes a snappy newpaper headline.

As for the APWU official, he’s just doing his job. The problem is that the real impact of such a move on his members would probably not be the kind of thing that would rally public support. “Postal workers to keep jobs, may need to change reporting times!” wouldn’t really get people fired up. So instead he plays the service card.

The only one I’d let off the hook is the politician- he’s probably just clueless.

Potential Postal Service reorganization could delay local delivery
The Monitor – McAllen, Texas

More on the endangered postmark of Rockford, Illinois:

According to the Associated Press, Congressman Don Manzullo, who aims “to deter the U.S. Postal Service from a move that he says would endanger the postmark of the largest city in his Illinois district, threatened Monday to hold congressional hearings if he does not prevail.”

You have to read a couple of paragraphs further to get to this: “Critics also argue Rockford could lose more than 50 jobs at its processing and distribution center if the change were to occur, and Manzullo said the delivery of outgoing Rockford mail could run days beyond the usual schedule.”

Just a thought- maybe jobs and service are the real story? And here’s another- did anyone ask the Congressman why moving the processing 60 miles would delay mail “days beyond the usual schedule.”? Thousands of post offices across the country are 60 or more miles from the processing plants that service them. (Are the roads in the Congressman’s district so bad that it takes “days” to travel 60 miles?)

And it might also be helpful if a reporter asked what exactly would happen to the 50 employees whose jobs might be “lost”. Career postal employees don’t get laid off. If their jobs are moved more than 50 miles, they are eligible for relocation benefits. If there are other vacancies closer to home, they have the option of applying for them. Neither option is necessarily going to be a pleasant transition, but either is better than being laid off.

Another day, another news story about rescuing an endangered postmark: “Local union leaders and Rep. Don Manzullo are heading into a meeting with top postal officials Tuesday in Washington, determined that Rockford will keep its postmark.” The story in today’s Rockford, Illinois Register-Star is similar to recent stories from Olympia Washington, and Sioux City, Iowa.

In each case, as with all of the possible plant consolidations being discussed, there are real issues about productivity, jobs and service. But what is it about postmarks? Why is Tom Harkin worried about “the elimination of the 150 year old postmark of this proud and vibrant city”? Why is the state of Washington concerned about letters from the state capital being postmarked ‘Olympia/Tacoma’ instead of ‘Olympia’?

I’ve read all the stories, and I have to confess, it’s still a mystery to me. Consider a few facts. In the first place, virtually all governmental and commercial mail is paid for not by the use of postage stamps which need to be cancelled, but by meter stamps or permit imprints, which don’t. Meter and permit indicia usually bear the name of the post office they were entered at. So most mail from the state of Washington, and any other business in Olympia is still going to say Olympia in the indicia, regardless of where it gets processed.

Here’s another fact- the postal service operates about 38,000 post offices nationwide. Each of them can, and does, apply a local postmark to some mail. (Probably 99 percent of it on April 15, when nervous tax filers insist on actually seeing the postmark before they’ll leave). But the vast majority of stamped mail gets cancelled in one of just 200 or so processing centers across the country. Mail a letter from Sioux City and it gets postmarked “Sioux City”. Mail a letter from Ponca, or any of a hundred or more towns around Sioux City and it gets postmarked “Sioux City”. Why isn’t Tom Harkin worried about the lack of a Ponca postmark?

More to the point, who actually looks at a postmark? Virtually all of the first class mail I receive has a meter or permit imprint. The few pieces a month that I send out with a stamp affixed are usually bill payments, that get sliced open by a machine at the other end. They are not opened by spinster ladies with green eyeshades who exclaim “Why Emma look! This one’s from Sioux City! Imagine!” So if the sender never gets to see the 150 year old postmark, and the recipient is a machine, what are we really losing here?

One last point- the “150 year old Sioux City postmark” sounds like something carefully imprinted from the original hand engraved die. The reality is a little less romantic- most postmarks these days are sprayed from inkjet print heads. Hard to see how that qualifies them for the National Historic Register.

Lets get over the concern about postmarks, and start talking about the real issues!