Club Meeting Program: Sept. 18th, 2012

Chief Floyd Lucas brought Jim Fizzell, Postmaster of Hickory to speak to us about the current state of the postal service.  Chief Lucas pointed out that letter carriers not only deliver mail, but they save lives!  What he means is that the carriers notice people whose mail is not being picked up, strangers in the neighborhoods, and many other abnormalities on their routes.  Postmaster Fizzell stated that a life was saved the other day of someone who had fallen and could not get help.

Jim Fizzell is originally from California, then was in Wisconsin prior to arriving in Hickory in 2007.  He has had to oversee the "Network Optimization" in the last few years of our local post offices and mail going to Greensboro to be processed.

The concern of the postal service going broke and not paying bills, is a bit out of context.  In 2006 the government forced the postal service to pre-fund their retirement program.  They over payed between $50-70 million, due to the dwindling employee base and the fact that congress does not want to return the $ to the postal service. The government has such a deficit already they are not inclined to increase their deficit by refunding any money.  There are no tax subsidies to aid the P.O. Usually the rate increases would fund the 1st year- profit, 2nd year- break even, 3rd year - a loss., so the increase would normally repeat every three years, but someone decided this wasn't a good idea, so the P.O. income has dwindled.  In 2006 the P.O. had no debt, and by 2012 had over 13 million in debt due to the pre-funding of pensions.  The money reported that they did not pay was for a fund that was already over paid. 

Emails and online business created a decline in first class mail, but that trend has begun to slow.  The P.O. has partnered with FedEx and UPS to deliver mail.  The P.O. carries the packages the last mile.

The cut to 5 day mail delivery is still being debated.  This may not be a big thing to consumers, but makes a big difference to catalogs, carriers, bulk mail, etc.  A Bill has been put before the Congress to address this concern.

On 8/11/12 the main Processing in Hickory closed and the mail was shifted to Greensboro.  There were 180 employees in this processing area that have dropped to 22.  Many jobs shifted to other aspects of handling the mail. Jobs have been lost and post offices have closed or hours have changed, but these changes were needed to adapt to the changing markets.  There are no new p.o.'s being built, so they are relying on Contract Post Offices, like Lisa's Hallmark to have a retail presence.

The Postal Service is not going away, just adapting to the current economic challenges.