Monday, March 21, 2011
By Mary Smith
MINERAL RIDGE
Home delivery will not be affected for the 1,800 customers served by the Mineral Ridge Post Office, scheduled to close at the end of business Friday.
Victor Dubina, U.S. Postal Service communications programs specialist in Cleveland, said post office services will be moved from the Mineral Ridge Post office, 3821 state Route 46, temporarily to the Niles Post Office, 43 W. Park Ave.
The “emergency suspension” of business at the Mineral Ridge location is taking place because the post office’s lease with the building’s owner, Jeff McElhany of TSC Real Estate, ends at the end of March.
The two differ on their accounting of negotiations.
Dubina said the post office Facilities’ Service Office in North Carolina tried to “reach out” to the building’s owner in July 2009 but never got a response until January 2010.
That offer was rejected and Dubina says the post office never received a counteroffer until October 2010, which also was rejected.
Dubina said the owner “knows who to contact, who to call to make an offer if he wanted.”
But McElhany said, “We were never in negotiations.” He said the post office sent him a lease, and he sent them another one with a price increase and the cost of things he said the postmaster wanted fixed.
He said he never heard back, and then e-mailed the post office in January or February saying: “You are publicly saying you’re trying to negotiate,” to which he says he got an e-mail back that “they are not willing” to negotiate.
McElhany said he then went to township trustees to tell them the post office said it was moving.
“We won’t look for an alternate site until the lease expires,” Dubina said. “People should expect the closing to occur.”
He estimated the post office has been in operation since at least 1956 in that building.
The post office runs three delivery routes out of Mineral Ridge and employs three carriers, one clerk and one postmaster. Those employees will not lose their jobs but will be transferred under a contractual process which requires that the employees be relocated.
Dubina noted that residents who have one of the 190 post-office boxes at the Mineral Ridge facility will have to do nothing, and their boxes will automatically be transferred to the Niles office, but still using the local zip code, 44440. Thirty-nine of the customers who were being provided post-office boxes for free because they could not get mail delivered to the curb will now be receiving their mail at home, and should contact the postmaster and he will tell them where to set up their post office boxes.
The post office says that the driving distance between the Mineral Ridge post office and the Niles office is three miles, one-way.
Dubina said the postal service lost about $8.5 billion in 2010 and is projecting a loss of $6 billion in 2011. He said mail volume has decreased by greater online bill paying, online correspondence and the weak economy.
As the post office nationwide looks at its operations and its costs, it also is looking at real-estate properties, 75 percent of which are leased, Dubina said. He said when leases come due, the organization is looking at a fair-market rate, which has gone down. “We’re looking for cost savings.”