Postal Service plans to cut Norfolk (VA) mail processing

http://hamptonroads.com/2014/07/postal-service-plans-cut-norfolk-mail-processing



The U.S. Postal Service announced on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012, that it will close its Processing and Distribution Center on Church Street in Norfolk and move the operation to the Richmond area.

Postal Service plans to cut Norfolk mail processing
By Philip Walzer
The Virginian-Pilot
© July 3, 2014

NORFOLK

The U.S. Postal Service plans to eliminate all mail processing at the Church Street station next year, an official said Wednesday.

The retail counter, however, will remain open, spokeswoman Freda Sauter wrote in an email.

In 2011, the Postal Service announced that it wanted to move all processing of local mail from the Norfolk Processing and Distribution Center on Church Street to the Sandston plant outside Richmond. Last summer, the agency transferred to Sandston the processing of outgoing mail, which is sent from Hampton Roads. The switch means that letters mailed from, say, Norfolk to Virginia Beach are trucked to Sandston to be processed and then driven back to Hampton Roads to be delivered.

It was part of a nationwide plan to close or consolidate more than 250 processing centers to reduce the agency's multibillion-dollar deficit. Officials at the Postal Service said the change would not affect delivery times, but local union officials have questioned the promise and said the savings would be negligible.