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West Side post office to stay open as officials study fate of 2 others
YOUNGSTOWN — An official of the postal clerks’ union said he’s happy with the U.S. Postal Service’s decision to take the West Side post office off the potential closing list, but he said his union will keep fighting for the survival of the East and South side post offices.
“Our work is not done,” said Ellis Williams, director of education and legislation for the 350-member Local 443 of the American Postal Workers Union. That union represents clerks and maintenance and mail transportation employees.
“We still must ensure that the East and South side offices also remain open and accessible to the citizens of Youngstown,” Williams said.
Although the West Side post office will survive, the East and South side post offices remain on the potential closing list because postal officials are still studying them, a postal service spokesman said. Postal officials will announce the fate of those offices after Oct. 1.
Williams credited the media, West Side residents, his union and the postal service as “instrumental in bringing to light the importance” of keeping open the West Side post office, 3020 Mahoning Ave.
Members of the clerks’ union, who conducted an informational picket line at the West Side post office on Tuesday, did the same at the East Side location, 733 N. Garland Ave., on Friday, and they’ll informationally picket at the South Side post office, 104 W. Hylda Ave., at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, Williams said.
Next Friday, an informational picket line in support of retaining the East and South Side locations will be at 11:30 a.m. at the downtown post office, Williams said, adding that Mayor Jay Williams and city council members will be invited to that event.
When the postal service put the West, South and East side post offices on the potential closing list in July, Victor Dubina, a postal service spokesman in Cleveland, said they were among the least- frequented post offices in the Mahoning Valley.
“As we started looking at it a little bit closer, we just didn’t see the efficiencies we thought we could get,” by closing the West Side post office, Dubina said Friday.
Postal officials determined that there were no significant opportunities to improve efficiencies in retail operations by closing that post office, said Youngstown Postmaster Veronica Rice.
Dubina acknowledged that a majority of West Side postal customers who filled out postal service questionnaires was opposed to closing the West Side office. “It was a factor. It was not the factor,” in the postal service’s decision to take that facility off the potential closing list, Dubina said of the questionnaire response.
Many West Side postal customers told The Vindicator on Tuesday that they valued the geographical convenience of that location.
The East and South side post offices remain on the potential closing list because postal officials studying ways to save money and improve operating efficiencies are “not as far along” in their studies of those offices as they were in their examination of the West Side post office.
Ellis Williams said Tuesday that shutting down the post offices proposed for closing in Youngstown would produce “no true savings for the postal service.”
If any Youngstown locations close, the clerks working there would be transferred to other post offices, Dubina said.
The postal service has been exploring consolidating facilities as a $7 billion deficit looms due to declining mail volume associated with a troubled economy and increasing e-mail, Dubina said.
The list of more than 3,000 post offices nationally that “qualified for review” as to their retention in July has been reduced to 413 today, Dubina said. As they study each post office, postal officials find offices on the list that don’t actually meet the criteria for closing, Dubina explained.
The number of northeast Ohio post offices on the potential closing list has dropped from 28 to 17 this week, Dubina said.
milliken@vindy.com