A Postal Service study will determine whether the agency can save money and still maintain customer service by re-routing singlepiece first class mail to a processing center in Traverse City, rather than Gaylord. The plan would affect all zip codes beginning with 497, said Jim Mruk of the Greater Michigan District of the U.S. Postal Service.

The postal workers union says the plan may be part of a larger trend toward moving northern mail processing further downstate, potentially jeopardizing access to speedy service for northern Michigan customers. They question whether rural citizens may get less service as profits from large bulk mailers influence postal decisions.

At the national level, William Burrus, the president of the American Postal Workers Union, contends in the union newsletter in May that "decisions, including network redesign and plant consolidations, are not based on their impact on the people, but on their effect on the large mailers" who help develop plans "to reconfigure the Postal Service to better serve their corporate interest."

Mr. Mruk said the study involving northern Michigan mail is not part of a move to close the Gaylord center, but concerns only re-routing one category of mail, letters that must be canceled or postmarked, for more efficient handling.

"In this study, we're looking at all collection mail, or single piece, first class mail, which is single pieces taken to the Post Office, dropped off in the blue boxes, or handed to your letter carrier," Mr. Mruk told The St. Ignace News. "These are your personal letters, the payment of your electric bill, your greeting cards."

If the post office decides to change the way it handles this local mail, all such mail currently canceled in Gaylord (which includes that from St. Ignace, Cedarville, Hessel, Mackinac Island, Sault Ste. Marie, Rudyard, Pickford, DeTour Village, Bois Blanc Island, Drummond Island, Mackinaw City, Cheboygan, Indian River, Petoskey, Beaver Island, Boyne City, and Boyne Falls) would be canceled in Traverse City, instead, where the Postal Service has a larger plant and the latest processing equipment, including bio-processing capabilities to spot anthrax or other bio-contaminants in the mail, Mr. Mruk said.

The Gaylord Post Office handles 90,000 such letters every night.

"We're looking at one area of operations, the canceling of stamps or the postmarking of mail," Mr. Mruk said. "We wouldn't make the change unless we can enhance or maintain current levels of service. The goal is the customer would not notice any difference in service."

Unlike the Gaylord Post Office, the Traverse City mail processing center is designed just to process, sort, and cancel mail. It handles 120,000 single-piece letters every night.

The final decision has not been made about re-routing this category of mail in northern Michigan, Mr. Mruk said, and will not be made until three things take place: the study must be completed, the idea must be approved by postal officials in Grand Rapids, Chicago, and the agency's national headquarters in Washington, D.C., and a public meeting must be held to give people a chance to voice their opinions. The public meeting would be planned in Gaylord, he said.

Mr. Mruk said there is "no definitive answer" about when the study will be concluded by postal officials, noting that, "It could be 30 days, 90 days, or even longer" for a decision to be reached.

"If the change would be made, part of the process would be a review every three months for the first year," Mr. Mruk said, "to ensure efficiency. There would be nothing to be gained from a business standpoint unless we can provide the level of service our customers expect."

Chris Levi, a mail clerk at the St. Ignace Post Office and local president of the union, disagrees. He doesn't believe that the small, single-piece, first class customer, who comprises a small part of the mail service's volume and income, is the Postal Service's top priority, and said that moving processing tasks further away from the local area can only slow service time.

"It's a matter of systematically taking the postal service and weeding out distribution sites," Mr. Levi told The St. Ignace News. "I'm hearing, through both union and management channels, that our mail processing for the 497 zip codes may eventually move even further south, to Grand Rapids or Lansing. Look at the logistics. You are taking mail from Gaylord, which is centrally located on a four-lane expressway, and moving it farther away from us to Traverse City, on two-lane roads. How can it not be slower service? I know that some of our mail, on three weekend days, is already going to Lansing by truck. That's a pretty new development. I, myself, have picked up Goetzville, Hessel, Drummond Island mail that used to go through the Sault, that now comes through us in St. Ignace to Lansing for processing on the weekends."

Mr. Levi said he believes moving weekend mail to Lansing for processing is an indication that more northern Michigan mail will be processed in Lansing or Grand Rapids in the future, a move that he said will be bound to slow delivery. He said he is concerned, as a postal employee and as a postal customer.

"I am a customer, too," he said, "and I want the same kind of service here I could get if I lived downstate. The Postal Service is supposed to work for the people, not for themselves. I do not agree with Mr. Mruk. And managers at the post offices have been instructed not to talk about this."

In a Letter to the Editor in the June 8 issue of The St. Ignace News, Mr. Levi urged citizens to contact their state representatives urging their support of keeping the local mail in the Gaylord processing center.

The mail processing change is being considered, as are others in his district, Mr. Mruk said, because of changes in the way people are using the mail service. In recent years, the increase in the use of email and online bill paying has hurt Postal Service revenue. Since 1998, the volume of this singlepiece first class mail has shrunk by 11 billion pieces, or four percent, but it still requires the most handling of any mail category.

At the same time, Mr. Mruk pointed out, mail volume is swelling from large commercial mailers who pre-sort or barcode their mailings and drop them off directly at mail processing plants. All of this means it takes less manpower for the post office to handle that pre-sorted mail category, which now comprises 75 percent of all mail. Part of the cost savings to the agency, if the decision is made to re-route the 497 mail through Traverse City, will stem from consolidation of staff at the Gaylord mail center. No career, union employees will lose employment in the process, Mr. Mruk said, although they may be reassigned to other jobs. It may prove that temporary employees at the Gaylord office, hired every six months or so on a temporary basis to smooth out the seasonal peaks in demand, may no longer be needed there.

"These are people hired with the understanding that they are temporary," Mr. Mruk said.

Acknowledging that the possibility of such a change may not be popular with the postal workers union, he said, "We do disagree with the unions that there would be a decrease in service."

Dan Windsor, postmaster at the Gaylord Post Office, and Chris Nathan, officer in charge at the St. Ignace Post Office, did not comment and referred inquiries to Mr. Mruk.

The Greater Michigan District of the U.S. Postal Service is also studying consolidation of operations in the Detroit metropolitan area, in Indiana, and in Illinois, in addition to the study at the Gaylord mail center.