Responding to Critics, Post Office Head Says Facility Reviews and Upgrades are Underway Everywhere

Despite stories suggesting otherwise, Louis DeJoy, the U.S. Posmaster General, has announced his agency's intention to maintain as many currently operating post offices nationally as possible.

In a public letter, DeJoy, in noting an ongoing facility review process, said, "Contrary to past facility reviews, where the intention was to close the mail processing facility when we moved out mail processing operations, the current facility review process has no such intention."

On the contrary, continued DeJoy, "The review process we are undertaking also includes substantial investments in the facilities we are studying."

DeJoy said that, as currently planned, "hundreds of millions of dollars will be invested in these facilities to refurbish and equip them to transform this organization, to ensure that we can serve our communities far into the future."

The letter, which was sent to Michigan Democrat Senator Gary Peters, chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, stated that substantial investments are being committed to modernizing postal facilities nationally, as well as addressing deferred maintenance issues.

DeJoy also made note of his agency's move to build new regional processing and distribution centers, with one such facility in Phoenix measuring 500,000 square feet scheduled to open this fall.

In the West, Houston is also seeing the upgrading of an existing 850,000-square-foot processing facility; while work will soon be completed on a 300,000-square-foot facility in Boise, Idaho.

Some 200,000 square feet will be added by 2026 to an existing 650,000-square-foot center in Santa Clarita, California.

DeJoy has come under criticism for the Delivering for America program, an effort launched in 2021 designed to reduce some $160 billion in Postal Service costs by the end of the decade.

That program has seen the agency aggregating packages and mail in fewer facilities, reducing processing and distribution costs, and shifting air volume to ground transportation.
​
The Washington Examiner earlier this year noted that under the Delivery For America program, the Postal Service lost $6.4 billion in fiscal 2023, and "projects a $6.3 billion loss in 2024."

By Garry Boulard

---