'Shortsighted' plan to change mail process in central Illinois draws ire of residents
The room of the Hilton Hotel in Springfield was seen overflowing with people who are against the United States Postal Service's plan to change how mail is processed in central and southern Illinois.
Residents from Springfield, Peoria, Champaign and more were joined by Springfield Mayor Misty Buscher, 9 city Springfield council alderpersons and Sen. Doris Turner, D-Springfield, among others, who all spoke out against the proposed changes along with the lack of communication from the USPS.
The USPS recently proposed a new network consolidation plan to change 58 processing and distribution centers in smaller Illinois communities. These distribution processing centers will be converted into local mail processing centers.
If the proposal goes through, mail sent from central to southern Illinois addresses, will first be sent down to St. Louis, Missouri before being sent back up to the state it was dropped off in.
More: Central Illinois residents may soon see increased delays in receiving their mail
In a letter to the State Journal-Register, the USPS said the proposed changes would not impact Springfield residents and employees would not lose their jobs. During Tuesday's meeting, the post office said 18 jobs would be "impacted" but did not say how specifically.
Local 239 American Postal Workers Union President Johnny Bishop said there's one specific reason layoffs have not been discussed.
"They’re going to mention multiple times there’s no layoffs, the reason is we can’t do layoffs. Our contract does not allow layoffs," Bishop said.
Even with the contract in place preventing layoffs, residents were still skeptical they would not happen.
“When you had a PowerPoint up here, the first line of your PowerPoint you were very adamant, I loved your emotional display – you said, ‘let me be clear: no one will be laid off’,” associate professor of sociology Lesa Johnson said. “It smells like lies and that’s why people are laughing at you, and that’s why people don’t believe you. When you cannot be honest with people then you are wasting their time and yours.”
Bishop also said the future needs to have transparency from the parent company to the public and postal workers impacted by decisions made outside the state.
“There is no reason the state of Illinois’ mail should go across state lines,” Bishop said. “You’ve got medications for your elderly, medication for your veterans, I mean you’ve got election mail."
The Sangamon County Board called the plan "short-sighted" to speed up the mail process by shipping packages out of state and plans to file a resolution opposing the plan its April 9 board meeting,
The public has until April 10 to share their complaints with the USPS before the plan put in place moves forward toward its next steps.
Complaints to quality-of-life and messages about the impending changes must be sent to surveymonkey.com/r/mpfr-springfield-il to be considered by the USPS.
Contact Claire Grant at CLGrant@gannett.com, X (Formerly known as Twitter): @Claire_Granted
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Residents voice displeasure over proposed mail changes in Illinois
