Cory Bilicko
Managing Editor
About 100 residents attend a community meeting Wednesday night at the Expo Arts Building, where six representatives from the USPS provided an update and heard questions regarding the recent closure of the post office located at 4580 Atlantic Ave.
During a community meeting Wednesday night at the Expo Arts Building, six representatives from the USPS provided an update and fielded questions concerning the Feb. 13 closure of the post office that had been located at 4580 Atlantic Ave. Nearly 100 people attended the event, and their primary concern appeared to be the lack of safety at the Market Street post office, which the postal service has recommended as an alternative site for the time being.
On a table at the entrance of the Expo on Wednesday were a sign-in sheet and an “optional comment form” concerning the “proposed discontinuance of the Bixby Post Office,” on which were three items seeking feedback from the meeting’s attendees. The first, which was identified as “effect on your postal services,” asked participants to “Describe any favorable or unfavorable effects you believe the proposal would have on the regularity or effectiveness of your postal services.” The second item, “effect on your community,” stated “Please describe any favorable or unfavorable effects that you believe the proposal would have on your community.” The third, labeled “Other comments,” asked attendees to “Please provide any other views or information that you believe the postal service should consider in deciding whether to adopt the proposal.”
Although the comment form referred to the post office’s closing as a “proposed discontinuance,” the Bixby Knolls location did indeed shutter its doors and discontinue service at noon on Friday, Feb. 13, according to Richard Maher, USPS spokesperson for Los Angeles and Orange counties, in an email to the Signal Tribune.
USPS representatives at the meeting included: Dean Cameron, real-estate specialist; Danny Mastren, finance manager; Tyrone Williams, Long Beach postmaster; Chris Dimaano, customer-service manager; Sherry Banks, customer-service manager; and Lawnet Bates, marketing manager. They opened the meeting by providing some background information on the USPS and the Bixby Knolls location, in particular.
“What brought us to this point? Several years ago— about four or five years ago— is when the postal service started seeing a decline in first-class revenue— first-class mail,” Mastren said, explaining that the change was largely attributed to the pervasive use of email. He said that the reduced amount of mail necessitated less of a need for carriers, fewer number of routes and less equipment.
“This caused an excess in required space that we needed for operations,” Mastren said. “So, nationally, we started looking at facilities that we thought were maybe oversized for the amount needed for the operation, and Bixby came up on the list.”
He said the USPS began considering ways to consolidate offices, as part of a program called DUO— delivery unit optimization, which involves relocating letter carriers from local post offices, stations and branches and consolidating them into centralized delivery offices that will continue to be served by the same processing and distribution center.
The existing retail operation would require less space and could then be downsized to a smaller space nearby, in an effort to increase operational efficiency and help USPS realize considerable savings in economies of scale regarding transportation, maintenance, custodial, leasing and employee complement, according to the USPS. DUO could affect larger mailers who drop-ship their mail, since they will need to take their mailings to the new centralized location. However, according to the USPS, the new site could save transportation costs, since multiple ZIP codes will be sorted in one facility.
“So that was our thinking when we went into the lease renewal for the Bixby office,” Mastren said. “We determined that we wanted to move the carriers out of Bixby and into north Long Beach, and find an alternate location for the retail. So, instead of entering into a long-term lease with the Bixby lessors, we decided we don’t want to do that because we’re finding a retail location soon, so we went on a month-to-month lease.”
Mastren explained that the lessor had found another tenant and gave the USPS a 30-day notice.
“So now we’re in a position of having to move out by the middle of February, and we had to scramble,” he said. “We didn’t have a retail location picked out. So what we had to do was the contingency plan. We had 1,500 to 1,600 P.O. box customers that needed a place to go to pick up their mail. So we found some space over at our north Long Beach retail, over on Market [Street], and we put P.O. boxes there until we could find some retail space here.”
Cameron then spoke to the crowd, saying that their first priority is finding a replacement space for the Bixby Knolls post office.
“What we’re looking for is approximately 4,500 square feet, which will house basically the same retail operations we saw at Bixby, along with all the same number of post-office boxes,” Cameron said. “The facility will be brand-new with all the modern amenities of a brand-new post office, and it’s our hope in the next 30 days to identify a list of one, two, three, four candidates— however many are out there— and we want it to be as close to the old Bixby station as possible. Once we identify those locations, we’ll be in communication with the landlords. We’ve already spoken to a couple of the landlords, as we speak, and they have expressed interest in wanting to lease the space.”
Cameron said that in about 30 days, the USPS will be ready to share information about the prospective lessors.
“We will post the address of each of those facilities at north Long Beach [post office], and we will give the list to various government offices, and we’ll attempt to publicize that list as best we can,” he said. “Once that list is posted, there will be a 30-day comment period where each and every one of you will have a chance to say, ‘I like this facility better than that facility,’ you can rank them, you can say, ‘I don’t like any of them.’ Once that 30-day comment period ends, we’ll put a list together that kind of outlines all the comments.”
He said that that information will then be presented to USPS officials at the district level who will make a decision as to which site to choose.
“It’s our goal to, say within 60 days, have a site selected, and, after that, it will probably take us 30 to 45 days to hammer out the lease negotiations, and then we’ll open the space as soon as we can,” Cameron said. “So, we’re really hoping to have a replacement space by the middle of the summer.”
The USPS representatives then passed around a microphone to audience members so that they could ask questions and express their concerns about the post office. About 50 individuals took the mic to voice their opinions or make inquiries. The overriding concern voiced by those who spoke up was the lack of safety at the Market Street location.
Some of the other concerns attendees expressed were: not being able to locate the Market Street post office; no drive-up collection box at the Market Street location; limited handicapped-accessible parking at that location; limited parking, in general, at that post office; graffiti on the wall outside the Market Street office; a city-bus driver not knowing the location of the Market Street location; whether the Market Street location is in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act; mail not being delivered; the Market Street office not being open on weekends; and how much of a guarantee there will be as to a new post office definitely coming to Bixby Knolls.
Those who have questions concerning post-office boxes or mail-delivery issues should call the USPS at (562) 983-3083. ß
