The U.S. Postal Service has announced that the Waterloo and Cedar Rapids mail sorting facilities will stay open, while the facilities in Creston and Carrol will close. Postal Service spokesman, Rich Watkins, says they have been examining all the positive and negative impacts that closing the Waterloo and Cedar Rapids facilities would have.
“Based on the study that we did, we determined that looking at service and looking at the finances, it wouldn’t not make good business sense to move those mail processing operations,” Watkins says. They were looking at moving the Cedar Rapids operations to the Milan, Illinois plant and the Waterloo operations to Des Moines.
Watkins says there were a lot of factors that helped them make the determination for Cedar Rapids. “That’s a large mail processing operation, looking at the numbers, the transportation routes and so forth, in terms of service, we just felt it’s not worth going forward,” Watkins says.
“Same thing in Waterloo, looking at moving that mail processing operation into Des Moines. Could Des Moines handle that excess capacity, did they have the work and floor space to accommodate not just the number of employees but also the equipment that would be necessary, as well as the mail that would come into Des Moines. And we determined that it would not be feasible.”
Watkins says while the mail processing facilities in Carrol and Creston will be closed, the other operations of those facilities will remain up and running. He says less than 10 clerks will be affected in Carroll and fewer than that in Creston.
Watkins doesn’t know when the two facilities will be closed. “We don’t have a set timeline yet, it’s going to be a local decision based on the needs of the Postal Service. And certainly we’ll work with the employee unions and the management organizations to minimize any impact it may have on those employees in Creston and Carrol,” according to Watkins.
The Postal Service put a moratorium on the closing of Post Offices until May 15th, and Watkins says they continue to be in talks over those closings and the best way for the Postal Service to move forward.
