Postal Officials

With their history of fractiousness that dates back decades, the last place one would expect to see a group of Postal Service managers and union leaders together is over a lunch table exchanging pleasantries. Perhaps that's why both sides were using such terms as "historic" to describe the meeting yesterday at the City Tavern in Old City at which postal officials representing 11 states signed a truce. The Declaration of Mutual Support and Cooperation is a pledge by management and union officials to improve their working relationship, improve morale on both sides and, they hope, thus improve the quality of service to postal customers.

When a letter funnels through the automated sorting machines in Valley Forge - a U.S. Postal Service delivery hub for parts of Montgomery, Bucks, Chester and other counties - a computer database scans the envelope for an address it recognizes and shuttles it along. In coming weeks, though, the machines may spit out some letters addressed to East Norriton Township. So say postal officials, who just learned that East Norriton officials have launched a campaign to change their mailing identity by encouraging residents to bag their old "Norristown" address and replace it with the township's true letters: "East Norriton.

Residents in the northern third of this township apparently will have to continue using Norristown's zip code and post office for their mail. The U.S. Postal Service, after considering a request made by Plymouth officials and U.S. Rep. Jon D. Fox (R., Pa.) five months ago, has indicated that changing part of Plymouth's zip code would be too expensive, said Township Manager Joan Mower. Though Plymouth's request has not been officially shot down, Mower said she expected to receive a letter to that effect any day. "They're not favorably disposed to our request," she said.

It's the last full week of postal service before Christmas, and mail carriers are well into their annual gifts-and-cards sprint. At the Chadds Ford post office yesterday, carrier Eleanor Lyster prepared for her dash around town. Postal officials said yesterday was expected to be their busiest day of the year.

Regional postal officials, under pressure from local opposition, have given the Spring House 19477 ZIP code more time. The Ambler Post Office, with a ZIP code of 19002, was scheduled to take over Spring House responsibilities as of this Saturday, but Margaret King, communications manager for the Philadelphia region, said the move would not happen that soon. "We'd like everyone to have a better understanding" of why postal officials want to make the switch, King said. "There still seems to be a lot of confusion and misunderstanding.

Washington Township Mayor John Robertson said last night that he would seek an injunction against the U.S. Postal Service if postal officials continued to refuse to locate a post office in the township. Robertson said he decided to take the action after learning yesterday that postal officials had chosen nearby Mantua Township as the site for a new post office despite Roberston's efforts to have the facility located in his own town. In March 1986, postal officials announced plans to build a new post office in the area.

Postal officials are getting ready to move the Sadsburyville post office to larger quarters next door. The Postal Service signed an agreement to lease the former Sadsburyville Grange Hall from Russell Schaible of Mortonville on March 14, postal spokeswoman Carol Larson said. "The agreement gives the owner 180 days to make changes to the building," she said. The move will take place by mid-September, and possibly as early as June 1, postal officials said. When alterations such as a handicapped entrance and installation of counters and mailboxes are completed, the lease can be signed and the moving date set. The first floor of the two-story Grange Hall offers about 1,200 square feet of space, double the area the village post office presently occupies in the old Schofield Tavern on Lincoln Highway.

Germany recently destroyed millions of commemoratives honoring a poet because the printing included tiny symbols that recall the Nazi past, particularly the SS troops. Known as runes, the symbols do not appear on the stamps themselves but on the edges of the sheets, and were visible enough to provoke a storm. The stamps honoring Heinrich Heine were issued Nov. 6 for the 200th anniversary of his birth. Shortly after that, the German media spotted the offending symbols, and postal officials were swamped with calls to withdraw the stamps.

Setting your watch to the timing of the local mail carrier has always been precarious. The U.S. Postal Service hopes to change that. In October, it will begin a 10-month project to construct a distribution center in Horsham that will consolidate local services and bring state-of-the- art postal service technology to the area, officials say. In surveys conducted by the Postal Service, customers have indicated that mail delivery is...

The U.S. Postal Service is investigating the disappearance of a political mailing sent Tuesday by Rick Williams and Joseph Massaquoi, Republicans seeking election to the Democrat-controlled Borough Council. According to a Postal Service spokesman, employees of the South Jersey Processing and Distribution Center in Bellmawr, where the mailing was dropped off, and the Lawnside Post Office are being questioned. "We are trying to determine what happened," said Ray Daiutolo, spokesman for the Postal Service's South Jersey District.

WASHINGTON - Saturday postal delivery could continue for at least two years. And the closing of post offices in smaller communities might not happen as quickly as advertised. The Senate on Wednesday approved legislation that would slow the Postal Service's effort to make such changes. By a 62-37 vote, it sent a bipartisan message that, though the system is ailing, it's not good politics, especially in an election year, to take a scythe to popular parts of the Postal Service. All area senators voted for the legislation, except Robert Menendez (D., N.J.)

WASHINGTON - With no financial relief in sight, the U.S. Postal Service is pushing ahead with planned cuts to more than 260 mail-processing centers around the nation, part of a billion-dollar cost-cutting effort that will slow delivery of first-class mail. In a statement Thursday, the cash-strapped agency said it had completed a review of closings to mail-processing centers it had proposed last fall. Based on community input and other factors, the post office said, it will move forward with consolidations involving virtually all of the 252 facilities on the list, as well as up to 12 new locations, beginning in mid-May.

WASHINGTON - The financially strapped Postal Service is considering cutting as many as 120,000 jobs. Facing a second year of losses totaling $8 billion or more, the agency also wants to pull its workers out of the retirement and health-benefits plans covering federal workers and set up its own benefit systems. Congressional approval would be needed for either step, and both could be expected to face severe opposition from postal unions, which have contracts that ban layoffs.

TRENTON - Fifty retail outlets in New Jersey face possible closure as the U.S. Postal Service looks to cut costs. The locations under study include Dividing Creek in Cumberland County; Goshen in Cape May County; and Stafford, Harvey Cedars, and Long Beach in Ocean County. The Postal Service, which lost $8 billion last year, announced Tuesday that it was looking at closing more than 3,600 of its more than 31,000 local offices, branches, and stations nationwide. Business has declined sharply in recent years as Internet options have replaced first-class mail, and the recession led to a decline in advertising mail.

A former postal worker from Northeast Philadelphia, accused of stashing thousands of pieces of mail in his garage, was charged Monday with willfully obstructing the mail, authorities said. David Blauser, 42, worked for the U.S. Postal Service for 14 years. He disappeared without warning April 23, leaving behind his wife, his sons, and his job carrying letters in Bustleton. Family members and investigators began looking for clues. As they searched on April 28, they found the mail: nearly 13,000 undelivered letters, bills, and packages hidden in trash bags in the back of Blauser's garage.

A former postal worker from Northeast Philadelphia, accused of stashing thousands of pieces of mail in his garage, was charged Monday with willfully obstructing the mail, authorities said. David Blauser, 42, worked for the U.S. Postal Service for 14 years. He disappeared without warning on Apr. 23 leaving behind his wife, his sons, and his job carrying letters in Bustleton. Family and investigators began looking for clues. As they searched Apr. 28 they found the mail: nearly 13,000 undelivered letters, bills, and packages hidden in trash bags in the back of Blauser's garage.

ON DEC. 1, the Daily News reported that the postal plant processing the city's mail was so dysfunctional and understaffed that unprocessed mail was filling the warehouse, sitting in bins and trucks and sometimes being destroyed. Problems stemmed from the new plant's going online with 600 fewer employees than the old. A postal inspector general's report highlighted a history of delays at the plant. In 2006 alone, 216 million pieces of mail were delayed. Some of that included people's medications, stoking the outrage.

Last night, U.S. Rep. Bob Brady said he was convinced that his pal Jim Gallagher was cleaning up the Southwest Philadelphia mail-processing center after a nearly three-hour "walk-and-talk" tour the two took yesterday afternoon. In fact, Brady said, Gallagher, a onetime Philadelphia letter-carrier who rose to become the new regional postal director, was sleeping at the plant so he could visit all three shifts. Brady, D-Pa., who on Dec. 5 called for a Government Accounting Office probe of the processing center, withdrew that request Monday to give Gallagher, a friend since childhood, "a little time before anybody was breathing down his neck.

The politicians who worked to make it happen and neighbors who once fought its construction gathered yesterday to celebrate completion of Philadelphia's $300 million mail-sorting and distribution center. "It is beautiful," declared Maggie Powell, executive director of the Eastwick neighborhood group that led the opposition to its construction in the 1990s. At the time, Mayor Edward G. Rendell, now Gov. Rendell, wanted to put it on land the city had available in her neighborhood to keep the 3,700 jobs in the city.

Rain, sleet and dark of night may not be problems, but Live 8 has forced the U.S. Postal Service to curtail mail collection tomorrow in a large part of Center City. Effective 5 a.m. today, the Postal Service announced yesterday, 85 mail-collection boxes in the no-car zone - the northwest quadrant of Center City - will be locked until 10 a.m. Tuesday. Though mail will be delivered as normal tomorrow to residents and businesses even as the Benjamin Franklin Parkway fills with fans for the rap and rock concert for African poverty relief, people who want to send mail will have to go to a post office or mailbox outside the zone.