The United States Postal Service is sticking with its Tallahassee branch and has set a public meeting to discuss its future operations.
The USPS this week released new information amid an ongoing facility review of their Tallahassee processing and distribution center on Adams Street. For the first time, the postal service revealed that the facility could have been shuttered in its current form.
“The review was initiated to evaluate moving some of the mail processing operations” from Tallahassee to Jacksonville, the post office said in a emailed announcement.
However, they made an early determination on that front.
“The initial results of the facility review support the business case for keeping the Tallahassee facility open and modernizing the facility as a Local Processing Center,” said Carol Hunt, media contact for USPS. “Additionally, the business case supports transferring some mail processing operation to the Jacksonville Network Distribution Centers.”
USPS announced they would be conducting their review of the local facility as part of a 10-year plan to overhaul and modernize mail service around the nation. For years, subpar mail delivery has been a point of contention for Tallahassee residents, many taking their complaints to social media and elected officials.
From 2018:Tallahassee residents outraged over poor mail delivery
From 2019:Postal Service officials put on notice for Tallahassee’s poor mail delivery service
County Commissioner Brian Welch, who previously said “the problems are immense and the service has been awful for years,” told the Democrat Wednesday that “it’s good that the Postal Service is acknowledging that they have some problems in the Tallahassee market.”
Months earlier, he met with Congressman Neal Dunn over the matter. The congressman shared that following his meeting with Welch he reached out to USPS.
“My staff and I reached out to USPS on multiple levels. In fact, I spoke, in person to several regional USPS leaders,” said Dunn in a prepared statement. “My team and I will continue to monitor every step of the way to ensure this problem is resolved, and resolved permanently.”
What changes are coming to Tallahassee’s mail processing facility?
As part of its review, USPS has announced that a public meeting will be held Nov. 14 to discuss the future of the Tallahassee Processing Facility and to hear from residents.
When the Tallahassee Democrat asked what was meant by transferring and modernizing, Hunt shared a PDF fact sheet of the Postal Service’s plan for updating their mail processing operations around the nation.
The fact sheet discusses plans, such as opening new Regional Processing and Distribution Centers and looking to equip them with “state-of-the-art technologies that process packages more efficiently.”
But Hunt did not explain how the plan could effect Tallahassee operations. This leaves many questions unanswered as to what will happen with the Tallahassee facility – if some business is to be transferred to Jacksonville and if this move will impact jobs in the area.
USPS plans to host a local public meeting at the LeRoy Collins Leon County Library on Nov. 14 at 2:30 p.m. to “share the initial results of the study and to allow members of the community to provide additional oral feedback.”
Community members can continue to submit written comment to The Postal Service’s survey until Nov. 29 at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/mpfr-tallahassee-fl.
“The Tallahassee LPC will be a critical node in connecting mail to the state and region,” Hunt said in the email.
Arianna Otero is the City Solutions Reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat. Contact her via email at AOtero@gannett.com or on Twitter @ari_v_otero