Earlier this month, Valbridge Property Advisors announced that it had been awarded a national contract to provide appraisal and due diligence services for the Postal Service’s real estate holdings of 32,150 facilities, which total more than 290 million square feet of owned and leased space. The contract originated in the US Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General office, according to this December 2013 solicitation. The contract … Read More
Photographing the post offices of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula
For over four years, from 2011 to 2015, Lucy and Lina Blair traveled through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula photographing each and every one of its 134 post offices. It was a way to bring them to each town in the U.P. so they could get to know their region better. They’ve put together a book of the photos, and they’ve shared many … Read More
Measure to Measure: Data, management, and the reliability of the mail
MARK JAMISON Reliable. It seems like a simple and straightforward word. It conveys, if not a very specific meaning, at least a pretty concrete sense of satisfying expectations. In some contexts, like certain forms of statistics and technical applications, reliable and reliability refer to the overall consistency of a measurement or the accuracy of the data being measured. But when … Read More
Ralph Nader: For America’s Unbanked: Re-establishing the Postal Savings Bank
Ralph Nader has a great piece on postal banking: "Fact: Tens of millions of Americans do not have a bank account. As a result, many of these Americans spend a reported $89 billion annually in interest and fees by using predatory services such as payday loan and check cashing services. It's a perpetuating cycle of poverty in which the poor … Read More
The Postal Service’s “Retail Channel Strategy”: A blueprint for privatizing the post office
It’s been clear for a long time that the Postal Service is in the process of privatizing itself by shifting processing operations to companies like Pitney Bowes through the workshare system and contracting out billions of dollars of work to private corporations (over $12 billion in 2014). The Postal Service has also been working to privatize its retail operations by … Read More
APWU endorses Bernie Sanders for President
The APWU National Executive Board has voted to endorse Bernie Sanders for president. “Politics as usual has not worked,” said President Mark Dimondstein. “Enough is enough!” The endorsement follows Sanders’ rousing speech before 2,000 activists at the union’s All-Craft Conference in late October. “We should judge candidates not by their political party, not by what they say, not by what … Read More
Postal Service releases on-time performance reports for Q4 2015
The Postal Service has released its on-time performance reports for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year (July 1 – Sept. 30, 2015). Compared to the third quarter, on-time performance for most types of mail has improved, but performance remains significantly down from the same period last year (SPLY) — before the changes in service standards and operations at … Read More
Bernie Sanders’s passion for the prosaic — or why the Post Office is part of what makes America great
The Washington Post has a piece by LIsa Rein about why Bernie Sanders has made the post office one of his main campaign issues. "In a race where many candidates for president are pressing flashy, headline-grabbing issues like immigration, the fight against terrorism, abortion rights and education, Bernie Sanders is offering a passionate defense of the prosaic. "His message of economic … Read More
Historic Mankato Post Office Up For Sale
The historic Mankato MN post office will seeon be listed for sale. The Post Office has been an icon in the Mankato downtown since 1896, and it served as a hub for mail distribution for decades, even earning a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. But by the end of this year, the local United States Postal … Read More
