The United States Postal Service (USPS) is looking to downsize amid financial troubles, and Tufts students could lose their campus post office as a result.
Despite turning over a $213,099 profit during Fiscal Year 2009, Tufts' USPS branch, located beside the Brown and Brew café in Curtis Hall, is on a list of nine post offices in the Boston metropolitan area in imminent danger of being closed, said Bob Dempsey, vice president and treasurer of the Boston Metro Area Local 100 division of the American Postal Workers Union.
USPS Greater Boston Discontinuance Coordinator Dennis Tarmey, who serves as the postmaster in North Reading, Mass., explained that USPS is considering closing branches like Tufts' due to severe financial trouble.
"I would like nothing better than to tell you that the Postal Service is a healthy, thriving agency from a financial viewpoint," he told the Daily in an e-mail. "But it would be irresponsible to do so."
Tarmey said that for that the Postal Service to remain operational, it must make some unpopular decisions. "The Government Accounting Office (GAO) has placed the USPS on a ‘High Risk' list as we stand to lose in excess of seven billion dollars this fiscal year alone, with no turnaround in sight," he said.
The timeline of the possible closings is unclear, since the USPS has never gone through consolidations of this size. Tarmey said there are over 400 locations nationwide on the chopping block. Tarmey expects the decision on whether to close the Tufts branch to be made sometime in October by Boston Postmaster James Holland and Greater Boston District Manager Charles Lynch.
The locally made decision will then be submitted to the postal headquarters for final approval. The decision could take weeks, according to Tarmey. If USPS decides upon closure, people who use the office will have 60 days to relocate their boxes before the office closes permanently.
According to Tarmey, Tufts post office customers would have to take their business to the West Somerville Post Office, the West Medford Post Office or the Medford Post Office. All three are located over a mile from campus.
Dempsey, the union official, speculates that the USPS might not eliminate the Tufts branch, but hire a contracted company to run it.
"They're denying that that's the case, but that's our suspicion," Dempsey said.
Tarmey attributed USPS' substantial losses to the huge change in the way people generally communicate. "During the past several years businesses and customers have increasingly turned to electronic communication alternatives as opposed to traditional mail options and delivery," he said.
Dempsey said that he did not understand the logic behind the possible closures, adding that of the nine branches in the Boston area slated to close, all but one have produced revenues recently. He said only the Logan Airport branch lost money last year. "If anything, most people would think that you if have an office generating that type of revenue you'd want to open more of them," he said. "I absolutely positively don't understand it."
But Tarmey offered a different perspective on the branch's performance.
The USPS temporarily closed the Tufts branch from mid-July through August because fewer student customers were on campus during the summer months.
Tarmey explained that in the 12 months just before the office's summer closure, the revenue had decreased by 10.9 percent, customer visits had dropped 11.2 percent and the total number of transactions had decreased by 11.9 percent from the preceding year.
While the revenue is still healthy, he said, these losses are why USPS is considering closing the location.
The eight other branches in the Greater Boston area currently on the consideration list for closure are located at MIT, Babson and Boston Colleges, Boston University, Logan Airport, Faneuil Hall, Soldiers Field and Nonantum, Mass.
Tarmey said that postal officials have organized a meeting with administrators of the potentially impacted colleges and that a meeting will be held next week to discuss the future of the college branches.
Tufts students currently have the option to send their outgoing packages through Mail Services and would be able to continue doing so even if the post office closed, Mail Services support services manager Sheila Chisholm said.
"The students who have used the mail room as a shipping-out point have found that it has worked fine," Chisholm said. Students who send mail from on campus must package their own shipments and then prepay and schedule a pick-up online, using either the United Parcel Service, Federal Express or USPS.
But Chisholm added that she would like to see the Boston Avenue post office stay open. "We would oppose the closure," she said. "We feel that it's an important service for the students and for the community."
Dempsey denounced the postal service's method of soliciting local residents' opinions through questionnaires available in the post office last week. "They've been doing it very secretly, which is a problem for a lot of people," he said. "If you didn't go to the post office last week, you didn't get the chance to fill one out."
He suggested that there are better ways to gather information. "They should be having a town meeting or something like that," he said.
The fate of the Tufts branch is still unsure, and Tarmey emphasized that nothing is certain yet. But when Dempsey was asked if he thought it would close, he said, "It sure sounds like it."
