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Customers who use the less expensive service will have to do so from Zephyrhills after Sept. 5.
By CHASE SQUIRES, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 14, 2002
DADE CITY -- The Post Office is planning to stamp out bulk rate business mail at its Dade City branch. Permanently.
The announcement, criticized by business and county officials Tuesday, will require bulk mailers to bring the discounted mail to the Zephyrhills Post Office.
"It just doesn't make any sense," Pasco County Property Appraiser Mike Wells said. "It's as though they don't care."
According to a letter from Dade City Postmaster Michael Porta, the business mail division in Dade City will close at 3 p.m. Sept. 5.
"No mailings will be accepted after this date," Porta wrote.
Porta is on vacation this week and unavailable for comment, but office supervisor Joan Bivone said she understood the action could be inconvenient for some, but the decision was not Porta's to make.
The Post Office's Tampa area marketing manager, Anthony Brescia, said his office would review the decision this week after receiving complaints, but the fact remains that the 40 bulk mail permits registered in Dade City aren't enough to make efficient use of the service.
Most of the Dade City bulk mailers are small, he said. They include civic clubs, the state women's bowling league based in town, and churches.
As the U.S. Postal Service struggles to overcome $1-billion-a-year losses, everything is under review. Later this year, that review will include studying the efficiency of post offices in San Antonio and St. Leo, Brescia said.
The loss of bulk mail didn't sit well in Dade City, and officials vowed to take the fight to Capitol Hill.
"I'm not going to have my people driving to Zephyrhills," Wells said. "That's just not going to happen. I'm going to do everything I can to have bulk mail done here."
Wells' office experimented with using an outside contractor to mail about 250,000 pieces a year from another location, but Wells said he plans to eliminate the contractor and handle mailings internally.
Tax Collector Mike Olson said his office sends out more than a million pieces a year, including up to 20,000 vehicle registration notices per month.
Billy Brown, general manager of Withlacoochee Electric Cooperative, said his company sends out 10,000 power bills a day from Dade City.
"It's very burdensome," Brown said of the Post Office switch. "I can't imagine them making that decision."
Even Dade City's water department will have to send its bills -- about 5,000 a month -- from the Zephyrhills Post Office before they can be delivered back to customers in Dade City.
Brescia said he already had heard complaints by Tuesday. But the extensive training required to certify someone to handle bulk mail is wasted when those workers deal with bulk mail an average of only 75 minutes a day, as they do in Dade City.
The Postal Service's published Transformation Plan, released this year, requires the service to find ways to save money, Brescia said.
When the post office eliminated bulk mail sorting this year in Bartow, mail could still be dropped off there and was shuttled to a Lakeland center, Brescia said. But those post offices are 20 miles apart. Dade City's and Zephyrhills' post offices are 8 miles apart, something most customers should be able to deal with on their own, he said.
City Manager Doug Drymon said more than losing bulk mail services, he would worry about losing a downtown post office. If the Postal Service decides to combine the facility with the one in Zephyrhills, that would spark city opposition, he said.
Brescia said Dade City has a strong office that is not on a list of small offices being reviewed for efficiency.
But he said the offices in San Antonio and St. Leo are on the list. That doesn't mean either small office will be closed, just that they will be reviewed in the coming year as the Postal Service considers the merits of keeping small offices open.