{"id":38867,"date":"2015-07-12T18:50:40","date_gmt":"2015-07-12T22:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.21cpw.com\/?p=38867"},"modified":"2015-07-12T18:54:01","modified_gmt":"2015-07-12T22:54:01","slug":"postal-delivery-issues-linger-in-northland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.21cpw.com\/postal-delivery-issues-linger-in-northland\/","title":{"rendered":"Postal delivery issues linger in Northland"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"By Brady Slater – July 11, 2015<\/strong>
\nThe Duluth mail processing center on the 2800 block of West Michigan Street remains fully staffed \u2014 but the delivery time of letters it handles appears to be falling behind the U.S. Postal Service\u2019s new two-day local standard.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou talk about frustrating,\u201d said James Linder, a local landlord who was hit with almost $400 in penalties from the city on payments that featured a postmark later than Linder expected.<\/p>\n

Linder oversees single- and multiple-family dwellings in the city. He said he mails quarterly payments and biannual taxes on the last day of the quarter. After he mailed his payments May 15, the letters later reached the city postmarked May 16.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019ve done forever,\u201d Linder said. \u201cI generally mail on the last day; it\u2019s cash management is what it is. I got there before 3 o\u2019clock to put it in the chute and I got a letter from the city saying I was postmarked the 16th.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, as part of sweeping changes in the way the USPS conducts business in the Northland, Duluth\u2019s last mail collection time was moved to 3:15 p.m., up from 8 p.m. Linder said he thought he had made the new cut.<\/p>\n

But postmarking is no longer done at the Duluth mail processing center, a casualty of moving first-class sorting operations from Duluth to Eagan, Minn., earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Despite the move, the Duluth processing center maintains its roughly 78 employees, who are left to do \u201cfinal sortation\u201d and sequencing for incoming letters headed to ZIP codes starting with 556, 557 or 558, a Postal Service spokesman told the News Tribune.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they\u2019d like to do is abolish all mail processing out of Duluth but they ran into a roadblock because they don\u2019t have jobs for the workers in the Twin Cities,\u201d said Kurt Waite, a Duluth processing center employee who has been among the most vocal critics of the Postal Service consolidation plan, titled \u201cnetwork rationalization.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the Postal Service\u2019s selling points for network rationalization was that it would include no layoffs of union workers. Thus, the workers remain at the center, conducting only a portion of their old jobs.<\/p>\n

Read More – Source:<\/em><\/strong> Postal delivery issues linger in Northland | Duluth News Tribune<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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By Brady Slater – July 11, 2015 The Duluth mail processing center on the 2800 block of West Michigan Street remains fully staffed \u2014 but the delivery time of letters it handles appears to be falling behind the U.S. Postal Service\u2019s new two-day local standard. \u201cYou talk about frustrating,\u201d said James Linder, a local landlord…<\/p>\n

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