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Harkin Announces Meeting on Sioux City Post Office
4/6/2006
WASHINGTON, DC – Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) today announced that the
United States Postal Service (USPS) will hold a meeting on the proposed
consolidation of the Siouxland Mail Processing Operations. The
meeting will take place Thursday, April 20th at 10 AM at the Sioux City
Convention and Conference Center on 801 Fourth Street. The
meeting will be open to concerned residents and attended by Sioux City
Chamber and government officials, Harkin staff and representatives of
the USPS.
“This meeting is long overdue and it’s critical the Postal Service
hears from Siouxland residents how its proposed consolidation plan will
impact their community,” said Harkin. “Major issues such as the
costs the USPS plan will impose on local businesses and possible delays
in mail service need to be apparent to all involved before moving the
mail processing facility.”
Harkin has been working to increase community input and transparency in
the USPS proposed consolidation plans. Harkin has succeeded in
pushing USPS to conduct a service audit to determine the impact
consolidation would have on Sioux City. He also included language
in the Postal Reform Bill that would block USPS from implementing any
consolidation plan unless it has conducted a study to examine costs of
the plan on Siouxland. This bill remains in conference committee
where the provisions calling for the study must be agreed to before it
would go to the White House for approval.
At Harkin’s request, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is
conducting a follow-up study to its 2005 report on USPS strategy for
realigning and consolidating its mail processing operations.
Eight months later after GAO’s original report, USPS appears to have
made little progress in implementing the recommendations to develop a
clear, transparent, and consistently applied process that includes
stakeholder consultation and communication and includes specific
management criteria and performance measures. Instead, they are
proceeding with close to 50 Area Mail Processing (AMP) studies on
consolidation that provide no opportunity for local communities,
business people and other stakeholders to either provide input or hear
the Postal Service’s reasoning behind their decision making at any
stage of the process.
Throughout this process Harkin has repeatedly called on USPS to
increase its communication with Siouxland community
leaders. In late January, Harkin along with Siouxland area
officials, met with Bill Galligan, Senior Vice President for Operations
for USPS. However, USPS failed to clearly provide the criteria
they used when making consolidation decisions or to provide a clear
timeline of when it will make its final decision. Most important
of all, local postal customers and businesses have received no
explanation of likely service delays and degradations as a result of
consolidation.