Gary mayor: Keep post office going
By Chelsea Schneider Kirk cschneider@post-trib.com June 30, 2011 10:01PM
Gary Mayor Rudy Clay proclaims Gary has the right people and place for the Postal Service during a public meting to share the initial results of a feasibility study and allow public comment on the plan to move Gary Processing and Distribution Facility to South Bend at Indiana University Northwest Thursday, June 30, 2011, in Gary, Ind. | Scott M. Bort~Sun-Times Media
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Updated: October 30, 2011 1:00AM
GARY — “Keep mail processing operations at the Gary facility” was the message Gary Mayor Rudy Clay and concerned community members drove home to U.S. Postal Service officials on Thursday evening.
The Postal Service is proposing to move outgoing mail processing operations from the Gary plant at 15th and Martin Luther King Drive to South Bend.
But those who spoke at the meeting questioned why the situation couldn’t be the other way around with South Bend’s operations consolidating into Gary.
“Why would you take a processing machine out of this facility and transfer it to a smaller facility in a snow belt that could get bogged down during the winter time instead of Gary, Indiana,” Clay said. “I know people who have certain views about Gary, Indiana, and there’s no secret about that but the perception is not reality. We have a location here I think is the best location in the United States of America.”
Clay’s comments were met with applause from the lively crowd inside the Savannah Center at Indiana University Northwest.
The proposed consolidation is expected to save the Postal Service
$1.3 million a year and will impact around 15 employees. Postal Service officials said the consolidation won’t lead to layoffs, but some employees will have to change jobs, hours or work locations.
The officials maintained the Gary facility will stay open, and no equipment would be moved to South Bend as part of the consolidation.
“We have equipment that is sitting idle because we don’t have the mail volume to keep it running,” said senior plant manager Bernice Grant. “It means we pay for resources that we’re not using.”
Standard local mail in the 463 and 464 ZIP codes would still be processed overnight, but mail from those same ZIP codes going to West Lafayette would move from overnight to two days under the consolidation.
State Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, is concerned consolidating some of the mail operations will lead to the Gary facility’s eventual closure.
“Gary already has the right people in the right location for the right reasons,” Smith said. “Now why do I say that? Because if you look at transportation, Gary is the hub of transportation not South Bend. We got train stations coming past us in all directions. Our airport is expanding. We got more highways than South Bend ever had. We should have looked at consolidation here in Gary.”
Retired Postal Service employee Charles Broden worked through an earlier proposed consolidation with South Bend in the 1980s. Broden, who worked at the Gary facility, recommended postal workers go to South Bend to collect data and learn the site’s operations.
“We stopped it 23 years ago,” Broden said, “and I don’t know what you are going to do now.”
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