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’13 USPS downsizing will curtail tax revenue
and Burton Speakman
YOUNGSTOWN
Closure of the Youngstown mail processing and distribution center will cost the city about $200,000 to $300,000 in yearly income-tax revenue.
“It’s difficult to give an exact figure because we don’t know what [the postal facility] will look like when all is said and done,” said city Finance Director David Bozanich, who provided the estimated income-tax loss Friday.
The closure, scheduled for February, could wreak havoc with the city’s budget in a few years, Mayor Charles Sammarone said.
“We’re OK with tax revenue for the next one to two years, I hope,” he said. “We’ve got to always continue to look at ways to be more efficient and save money. You ultimately try to avoid laying off police officers. But any time you lose income tax, it’s a concern.”
The U.S. Postal Service said Thursday that the downtown Youngstown center along with 139 others nationwide, including one in New Castle, Pa., would close next year.
About 500 people work at the Youngstown location. Most reductions are expected to come through retirement, a postal official said.
“That’s a lot of people and a lot of money when you talk about $200,000 to $300,000” in lost annual income tax, Sammarone said.
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, said the closing of the Youngstown center “is a great disappointment.”
The congressman added: “The legislation was in place to ‘fix’ the pension issue that requires the post office to fund 75 years of pensions in just 10 years, but my House Republican colleagues didn’t see fit to pass it. The result is that once again we have failed to make needed investments important to the country, and our local community suffers the consequences.”
There is no question the closure will have an impact on Mahoning County tax bills, said county Treasurer Daniel Yemma.
“I personally have tried to provide the local post office with any help I could,” he said. “I actually joined in a march to save our post office.”
It is important to get tax bills to taxpayers as quickly as possible, Yemma said. The treasurer’s office mails between 120,000 and 130,000 letters per year.
His office plans to continue to encourage taxpayers to move toward taking care of their tax bill electronically and will work to see if internal policies can be altered to allow tax letters to be mailed early. This might help to offset delays, he said.
“The issue comes with the first bill mailing. We have to wait for the state to certify the tax rates,” Yemma said. “Sometimes they don’t do that until late January.”
The first bills are mailed in early February, so there is not a lot of room to move up the mailing, he said.
In addition, many of the forms are sent to seniors who might spend the winters in Florida. The lack of a local distribution center could add time for arrival, Yemma said.
There also is the matter of the jobs that will leave the Youngstown area, Yemma said.
UPS has customer centers in Girard, Boardman and New Wilmington, Pa. UPS officials couldn’t be reached Friday by The Vindicator to comment if they would make changes locally to increase business that might be lost due to the postal closing.