Postal Service to close Hanthorn facility

LIMA — The U.S. Postal Service will close its Hanthorn Road mail processing facility, moving forward with a plan to integrate Lima’s operation into the Toledo center.

The director of the Postal Service’s Cincinnati district informed employees in Lima of the decision on Wednesday.

“We did our study, we had our findings and there’s a real cost saving for us. This could result in an annual savings of about $2.2 million. With the post office’s situation we felt we should go ahead and proceed with it,” Postal Service spokesman David Walton said.

The Postal Service will begin shifting operations from Lima to Toledo on July 1. It hopes to finish by January, though no step-by-step timeline has been established.

Walton said 54 employees would be affected by the closure, though no one would lose his or her job. Preserving employment, however, is contingent on workers accepting a transfer to another facility within 500 miles.

Mayor David Berger said that’s a lose-lose situation.

“Even if they agree to the transfers, that means it’s a loss for us as a community, and if they don’t agree to the transfers they lose their jobs.”

Walton said 17 employees who are eligible could chose to retire. Laura Kessen, postal worker union president, couldn’t be reached Wednesday night.

Concern over the potential loss of jobs and questions about the accuracy of the Postal Service’s annual savings claims led to the formation of the 458 Regional Postal Task Force, which lobbied the Postal Service to explain how money would be saved.

The Postal Service has previously refused to provide that information. Walton did not have further details on the savings breakdown Wednesday.

“They have not released any information to us to justify or validate their numbers or findings. That’s really why we went down the road with the Office of the Inspector General to see if those numbers did indeed play out and were factual,” said Jeff Sprague, vice president of the Allen Economic Development Group and chairman of the 458 Regional Postal Task Force.

The OIG agreed to perform an independent audit of the Postal Service’s findings. That report was expected to be released soon, though the post office was under no obligation to follow the recommendations.

Walton said he didn’t have the audit, though previous OIG audits have typically backed the Postal Service’s own determination.

“I have confidence once they release their findings they will be in agreement with our decision,” he said.

Year-to-date mail volume at Lima’s facility had dropped about 20 percent compared to 2008.

Though nothing from the OIG’s audit has yet been publicly released, the office presented preliminary findings to representatives of U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown and George Voinovich and Rep. Jim Jordan on a Wednesday afternoon conference call.

Berger hasn’t seen the numbers, but said the audit apparently backed up the Postal Service’s claims.

The Postal Service had been examining the prospect of closing Lima’s processing center since September. The decision to close it means all mail sent in the 458 ZIP code — which includes 70 post offices in nine counties — will now go to Toledo before being routed to its destination.

“I think really what played out is demographics,” Sprague said. “We’re not as big as Dayton, or Cincinnati or Toledo. I think that played a factor more so than just looking at the overall district and looking at how they could improve efficiency.”