The Postal Service is closing the post office at 7 Pixley Ave. in Corte Madera, Calif., sometime over the coming months.
The town manager was informed earlier this summer that the Postal Service planned to “bifurcate” window services and the delivery operation. Carriers will be relocated to other offices, and the retail operation will be relocated to a smaller facility.
On August 22, the Postal Service informed the APWU that it was losing the lease on the Corte Madera post office and two full-time clerk positions were being eliminated and the employees excessed.
Ten days later, in a note posted on Facebook, the town manager wrote that “the Town has not received any information from the United States Postal Service (USPS) indicating that a move is in the works…. We have not received any indication from USPS whether this pursuit [separating retail and delivery operations] is likely to be successful, when such actions might result in changes to current operations, or where retail operations might go in Town if such relocation is necessary.”
In response to the union’s request for clarification of some details, the Postal Service explained that it was looking for a post office location with window services only. The lease expires in April, so there’s still time to find a new location.
The 21 routes working out of the Corte Madera post office will be relocated to two different facilities, one in San Raphel and another in MilI Valley. The number of clerks is being reduced from four to two because there will be no more mail distribution work once the carrier operations are gone.
A new location with window service may be just what the Town is looking for. The town manager’s FB post says the growing carrier operation has led to “an increase in large truck deliveries at all hours of the night and various spillover effects onto Town property and the surrounding streets.”
The Postal Service is supposed to hold a community meeting when it’s considering relocating a post office, but that hasn’t happened yet.
While the closing of the Corte Madera post office is not related to the implementation of Sorting & Delivery Centers — carriers are going to other post offices, not an S&DC — the “bifurcating” of retail and delivery functions is the same sort of “decoupling” going on under the Delivering for America plan.
And just as the Corte Madera post office will be downsized into a new retail-only location with two clerks instead of four, the thousands of post office that lose their carriers to an S&DC will also see clerk positions eliminated and then be considered for relocation to a small, window-only facility. That is, if they’re not closed completely.
