Postal Service Urged to Reverse Building Freeze

Citing a burgeoning California population that needs high-quality postal services, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is urging the postmaster general to reconsider a decision to freeze plans to build or expand 47 post offices statewide.

The projects that would not be funded--estimated at $133 million statewide--include 14 in Los Angeles and Orange counties, from larger post offices to new mail sorting facilities. The Postal Service, facing a deficit that could reach $3 billion this fiscal year, has frozen new construction and leasing that will affect more than 800 projects nationwide.

“[California’s 3 million] population increase underscores our need to expand--not halt--the construction of postal facilities,” Boxer wrote in an April 6 letter to Postmaster General William J. Henderson. “Post office business directly depends on the size of the surrounding population, and California’s population is growing at a rapid rate.”

A spokesman for the postmaster general’s office in Washington said the agency’s hands are tied.

“We’re getting a lot of requests,” said Azeezaly Jaffer. “Because of our current situation, we’re not able to do anything about it.”

Last week, the agency’s board of governors ordered a 90-day study of cost-cutting measures that could include ending Saturday mail delivery and closing some of the 38,000 post offices across the country. Although Congress would have to approve delivery cuts or closures, the Postal Service raises and spends its funds independently of the federal government.

Boxer’s California spokesman, Jeff Logan, said the senator’s office will continue to put pressure on the Postal Service and not “sit back and watch this go by. Someone needs to speak out.”

These new post office building projects have been frozen:

* North Downey Post Office

* Huntington Beach Surf City Carrier Annex

* Irvine Northwood Post Office

* Irvine Spectrum Post Office

* La Puente Rowland Heights Post Office

* Lancaster Antelope Valley Delivery and Distribution Center

* Los Angeles Farmers Market Post Office

* Los Angeles Sanford Post Office

* Santa Ana Sun Harbor Post Office

* Santa Monica Carrier Annex

In addition, plans to expand the Anaheim Sunkist Post Office and the Venice Marina del Rey Post Office have been frozen. A plan to buy the building the Fullerton Main Post Office leases has been put on hold. And a plan to build a new Los Angeles Terminal Annex in a vacant building also has been frozen.