Postal Service

A Tredyffrin Township mail-processing center that employs 733 will be closed and its operations consolidated in Philadelphia, but a second center in Horsham was spared in this nationwide round of cutbacks announced by the U.S. Postal Service, which faces billions of dollars in losses. One hundred forty postal facilities are slated for closure, according to a list released Thursday night by the Postal Service. An additional 89 are expected to be announced in the future. The 229 closings will eliminate 28,000 jobs and are expected to save the Postal Service $2.1 billion a year.

Postal worker Bill Saar delivers mail along Route 30 in Exton. When people began moving into the new Exton Crossing apartment complex just off the highway this summer, he thought he would be the one tucking letters in their mailboxes. But Saar, a U.S. Postal Service employee since 1969, was wrong. Instead, the Postal Service hired a local copy-and-printing company for the job. On July 12, the contractor began delivering mail to the first three tenants at the 408-unit complex still under construction in West Whiteland Township.

If things had gone according to plan, postage stamps would cost 2 cents more the day after New Year's. But things aren't exactly going according to plan these days for the U.S. Postal Service, whose business has gone from booming to blown-to-bits in a few short years. Just listen to Postal Service spokesman Greg Frey, a 30-year veteran in Washington, as he explains what's at stake for the venerable agency, which got its start under Benjamin Franklin in 1775: "We have extreme liquidity issues, and in spite of our best efforts to cut costs," Frey said, pausing, "we just are struggling here.

The U.S. Postal Service, riding a crest of spectacular sales with its Legends of American Music Series of commemoratives, will issue Wednesday a booklet of 29-cent stamps recalling four famous Broadway musicals. The commemoratives, 20 to a booklet, will depict scenes from My Fair Lady, Porgy and Bess, Show Boat and Oklahoma! The stamp for Oklahoma! was issued earlier this year as a separate sheet of 40 stamps. The issuance will coincide with the 100th anniversary of Broadway.

By Bill Bonvie The 1997 movie The Postman depicted one man's attempt to reintroduce cohesion to society following the collapse of civilization. The hero, played by Kevin Costner, is at first pretending to be a postal representative of a newly restored U.S. government. Eventually, however, his charade morphs into a mission, as he inspires a group of young recruits to begin reinstituting postal service while battling a self-styled warlord and his army. It's not my favorite film, but The Postman does convey how essential basic government services such as mail delivery are to our very existence as a country.

Consider the possibilities, shoppers: 33 oak and mahogany desks, 40 telephones, 164 calculators, motorized drafting tables and 108 typewriters, all of which go on sale at 9 a.m. today at the U.S. Postal Service's Equipment Facility at Tenth Street and Pattison Avenue. The occasion is the first auction of excess postal equipment at the Philadelphia Division of the Postal Service. In all, hundreds of used and surplus items, right down to pencil sharpeners and doormats, will be for sale.

The U.S. Postal Service, which plans to increase the cost of a first-class stamp to 30 cents because it is losing money, spent as much as $10 million on conferences last year, including $99-a-person meals and a $12,000 reception, a government study reported yesterday. According to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, conferences were held at resorts in Hawaii, Arizona and Florida, usually during winter months. Also, the Postal Service awarded bonuses averaging $5,564 to each of the 75 division general managers in 1988, when postal costs went up at twice the rate of inflation, the Washington Post reported.

A prominent Democratic lawyer and former member of the board of governors of the U.S. Postal Service has been accused of misconduct for pressing postal officials to settle a real estate dispute involving a friend and political ally. Alan Kessler, a partner at the Center City firm of Duane Morris L.L.P., repeatedly urged Postal Service lawyers to consider settlement proposals and helped principals of a Sarasota, Fla., real estate firm to craft their position even as they were battling his own agency, said a report from the Postal Service inspector general.

WASHINGTON - Senators announced a bipartisan plan Wednesday to help keep the Postal Service solvent and continue six-day mail delivery for at least two more years. The proposal would lift the agency "from the brink of bankruptcy," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee. The Postal Service lost $8 billion last year and could report even larger losses when its 2011 budget year report comes out in mid-November. "We're not crying wolf here" about the agency, said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on the committee.

A Tredyffrin Township mail-processing center that employs 733 will be closed and its operations consolidated in Philadelphia, but a second center in Horsham was spared in this nationwide round of cutbacks announced by the U.S. Postal Service, which faces billions of dollars in losses. One hundred forty postal facilities are slated for closure, according to a list released Thursday night by the Postal Service. An additional 89 are expected to be announced in the future. The 229 closings will eliminate 28,000 jobs and are expected to save the Postal Service $2.1 billion a year.

WASHINGTON - With financial losses mounting, the nearly bankrupt U.S. Postal Service is urging the House to quickly pass legislation that would give it broad authority to close thousands of low-revenue post offices, reduce labor costs, and end Saturday delivery. At a meeting Friday, the Postal Service's board of governors said that a bill passed by the Senate last week doesn't go far enough to give the agency the latitude it needs. That bill would provide the Postal Service with an $11 billion cash infusion to help pay down ballooning debt but halt the immediate closing of up to 252 mail-processing centers and 3,700 post offices.

With a workable rescue plan for the beleaguered U.S. Postal Service approved last week by the Senate, Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe has good reason to extend a delay in implementing the devastating cuts planned to stanch agency losses reaching $36 million a day. That's what Donahoe should do. Indeed, it would be entirely self-defeating for him to proceed with closing hundreds of regional mail-processing centers (including facilities in...

In the digital age, "snail mail" is no longer as critical as it once was. And the Postal Service, like everything else, must change to meet the times. But the current crisis facing our national postal system — and by extension the rest of the country, no matter how we pay our bills or get our magazines — has essentially been manufactured by Congress. So Congress needs to fix it. Now. It's true that the Internet has transformed the way significant numbers of Americans communicate with each other and pay their bills (although one-third of Americans, most of them poor and the elderly, do not use the Internet.)

It's no secret that the U.S. Postal Service is in financial trouble. Its business is shrinking, with first-class mail revenue down 25 percent since 2006. It has lost $25 billion in the last five years. To stem the tide, the Postal Service is pursuing a wide range of cost-cutting measures. Among them: closing underused post offices. It has so far identified about 3,700 for possible closure, ranging from Pony Express Station in Fallon, Nev., to the U.S. Capitol Station in Washington.

WASHINGTON - The Senate offered a lifeline to the nearly bankrupt U.S. Postal Service on Wednesday, voting to give the struggling agency an $11 billion cash infusion while delaying controversial decisions on closing post offices and ending Saturday delivery. By a 62-37 vote, senators approved a measure that had divided mostly along rural-urban lines. Over the past several weeks, the bill was modified more than a dozen times, adding new restrictions on closings and cuts to service that rural-state senators said would hurt their communities the most.

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.)

WILLIAM E. Headen Sr. might have been the best-dressed mail carrier in the city. "He was an impeccably dressed mailman," his family said. "His supervisors would display him to everyone as a great example of pride. " Mail delivery was only one of the many jobs that William Headen, known to everyone as Billy D, had in his life, each of which he gave his dedication and energy. "Billy D was never afraid of working because he knew the value of being a hard worker," his family said.

You've got mail! Just not the white envelope with a 45-cent stamp kind of mail. Steeped in red ink, the U.S. Postal Service has for two decades grappled with a downward spiral in first-class mail. A surge in e-mailing and electronic billing has leftit with a glut of post offices and mail-distribution centers. The Postal Service is the core of a broader trillion-dollar mailing industry that employs more than 8 million. That industry includes, among others, private envelope manufacturers, suppliers, and mailing houses — companies that help other organizations prepare their mail for Postal Service delivery.

Getting transportation funding right I'd like to point out a few errors in the editorial "Must a bridge fall down?" (Feb. 12). First there is your notion that moving forward on new transportation funding legislation should be a quick and easy proposition for any administration. It was only six months ago that the Transportation Funding Advisory Commission delivered its final report to Gov. Corbett. The state's economy has been anything but robust since the report was issued, and the idea of rushing legislation through does not make sense for taxpayers.