BREWER, Maine — The public, including customers and employees of the U.S. Postal Service, will get a chance to weigh in next week on a controversial USPS consolidation proposal that would shut down the mail processing operation at the Hampden processing and distribution facility.
A meeting at Jeff’s Catering on 5 Coffin Ave. in Brewer’s East West Industrial Park at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 11, is expected to attract a large crowd as postal officials explain the consolidation proposal idea, which resulted from a USPS study started four months ago.
The proposal calls for closing the Eastern Maine Processing and Distribution Facility in Hampden and having the processing and distribution facility in Scarborough — the only other one in Maine — handle those duties.
Both U.S. senators from Maine, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, are solidly against the proposal, saying that mail service to the northern part of Maine would suffer.
The USPS has posted presentation materials as well as a summary brief for the proposal online at http://about.usps.com/streamlining-operations/area-mail-processing.htm.
The USPS has also scheduled an invitation-only meeting for premier business account customers and other officials at 3 p.m. Jan. 11.
I’m sure there is a mail processing center in southern New Hampshire or Northeast Mass. Why not close the southern Maine Center and move southern Maine’s mail to one of those locations. Then, those of us in Central/Northern/Eastern Maine, who are already affected by 2nd rate infrastructure will at least get our mail timely.
Now That actually makes sense! I Like your thinking.
Portland south is just northern Massachusetts anyways.
By closing the Southern Maine facility, it would be easier to transfer that workload to other facilities that are geographically closer to the closed facility. The transfer of employees would be easier as well, as there would be more choices of nearby locations for them to choose from.
It will be tough for the local economy for this place to close, but there really is no point in keeping an unneeded facility open just to keep people working in jobs that are rapidly becoming obsolete. We need to let this one go.
The argument behind closing these facilities is that the amount of mail has decreased due to email, internet, etc. While I believe this is certainly true what they never mention is how this is offset by the amount of packages being sent as a result of ecommerce operations. I personally send between 30-50 parcels per week through USPS as I sell on Ebay. There are millions of people like me doing the same as well as countless companies selling through their own websites and using the USPS to ship their products. How can the post office be hurting that bad when they have all of this business? Yeah they lost millions or billions of envelopes at $.43 or so but they gained millions of packages at $8-$10 a pop. Simple math would tell you that one offsets the other and we should not be closing mail facilities. Closing the Hampden facility would be a logistical nightmare, especially for those parcels going to northern parts of the state.
They are hurting like any private business would be if they; retired people out too young, over paid almost everyone, had too many employees, provided too much paid sick, holiday and vacation time. No business could operate this way.
It is my understanding that envelopes/packages if being shipped across town go to Scarborough first anyway. Didn’t they start doing that a year or two ago? That takes an extra day to complete. There would be no change for your packages from what is happening now anyway.
A first class letter would take an extra day with the closure.
If you go to:
http://about.usps.com/streamlining-operations/area-mail-processing.htmbe sure to search for EASTERN MAINE and not HAMPDEN!
Leave the Hampden facility OPEN!
If the Hampden plant is closed, it is going to take FIVE days for someone in Fort Kent to mail a letter to someone else in Fort Kent. Same with Calais and all the points in between (or beyond in Fort Kent’s case). Being an insider now, I have learned that the public NEEDS to speak up about this if they want to continue having this service provided for them in a dependable, timely manner. If you care about success of local businesses, or even if you don’t, please empathize for the approx. 200 families whose income would be significantly hurt if this facility was shut down. PLEASE make your voices heard on 1/11/12. It’s time we step up and show the government that we, the people, are taking a stand. Enough is enough already. They’re attacking the postal service? REALLY?! Come on.
where i live the local post office sorts local maim and puts it through right away. why would your town be any different?
because my town is bangor and there is a lot more mail than the tiny new bangor post office could hand sort.
It’s not just Bangor. I don’t think any of the eastern towns sort their own mail anymore. It all goes to Hampden to be counted and sorted and comes back the next day. That’s my understanding.
My understanding as well.
Didn’t know so many people were for putting people out of work. Must be a misery loves company thing.
However with the amount of packages, letters and payments towards bills I have missing, perhaps they should fire some of those people and hire new ones
Why dont they close the Scarborough facility since Hamden services a larger protion of Maine?
This from the same bunch of crooks that want to manage your healthcare….
Remember, both Romney & Obama are bad for the US
And neither of them has anything to do with this. USPS is a company controlled completely by Congress.
Yes, they do…
Obama would support the cuts, even though both Congress & Obama would never take a personal pay cut before they would cut USPO
As far as Romney, he is actually the biggest RINO in the entire country, and supporting USPO cuts is exactly what he would support…
Wow – THAT will fix everything (moving to Scarborough), since it ALREADY takes two days for Priority Mail to move from Scarborough to southern Aroostook. (watch your online tracking progress to see this).
Of course if we could dump the Federal Reserve Usury Banking Cartel (from manufacturing the money supply) then our country could have about twice as much interest-free, Treasury-issued money, INSTEAD OF those Corporate Pirates raking it all in (all the while shaking their war-mongering FISTS in the world’s face).
TAKE NOTE:
How about addressing the -cause- of the financial “crisis” (agenda) instead of nit-picking over the symptoms – hey Rack’o-Rama, Bam-Bam-Wamma (the -current- Corporate Puppet-Monkey)?
(and all others beginning their Presidential Election [debauchery] campaign – CHARADE)
Oh really, they’re busy winding up the next WAR (sanctions, saber-rattling, shutting down the financial transfer utilities to other countries, since two countries (Iraq and Iran) who had announced their urge to sell oil in Euros instead of Dollars.
That’s when the (political/war) heat turned up high – not the “weapons of mass destruction” (I-rack) or the “nuclear” processing (I-ran), but when “they” announced that they (their country) needed to pull OUT of the Dollar Prison, so that they could have sovereign nations – instead of the corporate petroleum-pimps’ slavery.
ANY politician who will not directly address monetary reform (all the way down to local “Select”men) are not worth the paper ballots their names are printed on.
We’re running out of time and options here. WWIII is building – now – while people are distracted – dis-informed – by the Wizzard behind Oz’s curtain (the mainstream media, the election charade, etc.).