Eatontown Postal Facility Consolidation to Begin This Summer

The Monmouth Processing and Distribution Center, at 307 Industrial Way West in Eatontown, is one of many U.S. Postal Service facilities that will be consolidated this summer.

The U.S. Postal Service recently announced plans to move ahead with a plan to consolidate its network of 461 mail processing locations in phases.

The first phase will result in up to 140 consolidations through February, 2013.

USPS Spokesman Ray Daiutolo said all mail processing operations of the Eatontown facility will be moved to the Trenton Mail Processing and Distribution Center over the next few months.

Daiutolo said the business/bulk mail entry of the facility will remain open "for now."

"Due to the volume of high-priority mail predicted for the election and holiday mailing seasons, no consolidating activities will be conducted from September through December of 2012," a release from the USPS states.

The USPS said approximately 5,000 employees will begin receiving notifications next week "related to consolidating and other efficiency-enhancing activities to be conducted this summer."

Closing the Eatontown facility will result in cause some employees to take on new jobs  and transplanted to a new facility, most like the Trenton location, Daiutolo has said.

Daiutolo said repositioning will be handled according to the employees' union agreements.

He said the facility currently has 225 employees, including temporary and non-temporary positions.

"These consolidating activities will reduce the size of the Postal Service workforce by approximately 13,000 employees and, when fully implemented, will generate cost reductions of approximately $1.2 billion annually," the release from the USPS states.

Eatontown Mayor Gerald Tarantolo said the closing of the facility is a "good news, bad news" scenario for the borough.

"There is going to be a loss of jobs and we can't afford that right now because of Fort Monmouth closing the unemployment rate increase," Mayor Tarantolo said.

"However, we do not get income from the facility, so if the building is eventually sold to someone who is paying taxes, it becomes a ratable," he added. "The question is, does that gain outweigh the loss of close to 300 jobs."

Councilman Kevin Gonzalez said he did not think the closing is going to have a "catastrophic effect."

"This area has had enough and there needs to be jobs brought to the area," Councilman Gonzalez said. "We have more businesses moving out than moving in."

Mayor Tarantolo said another negative result of the facility's closing will overnight delivery of mail.

"Once they close, the process of delivering overnight mail is in jeopardy," Mayor Tarantolo said.

Daituolo has said the USPS wants to "relax the overnight expectation for a first class letter."

He said the current service standard for single piece of first-class mail is one to three days, depending on the location the piece is mailed from and the location it is going to.

If the change occurs, the service standard for single piece first-class mail would be two to three days.

“We are essentially preserving overnight delivery for First-Class Mail through the end of 2013, although we are collapsing the distance that we can provide overnight service to the distribution area served by a particular mail processing facility,” USPS Chief Operating Officer Megan Brennan said in a release.

The release states that approximately 80 percent of First-Class Mail will still be delivered overnight.

The second phase of USPS consolidation is scheduled to begin in February, 2014 and will include 89 facilities. The list of facilities that will be consolidated in 2014 has not been released by the USPS.

"When fully implemented in late 2014, the Postal Service expects its network consolidations to generate approximately $2.1 billion in annual cost reductions, and lead to total workforce reduction up to 28,000 employees," the release states.