Postal cuts to raise costs for schools, nonprofits

Besides 400 jobs lost at Fifth Street center, at least 100 more could go.

Susan Groves, an employee at Yeck Brothers Company, sorts bulk mail at the Moraine mail house that handles large volumes of mail for non-profit private businesses.

Chris Stewart/Staff Photo Susan Groves, an employee at Yeck Brothers Company, sorts bulk mail at the Moraine mail house that handles large volumes of mail for non-profit private businesses.

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By Steve Bennish, Staff Writer Updated 8:14 AM Wednesday, December 7, 2011

The ripple effects from closing the U.S. Postal Service processing  center here could be the loss of 100 or more jobs beyond the 400 unionized federal employees at the downtown facility, businesses say.

And the closure would slap significant extra costs on nonprofits  including schools, universities, and arts organizations that use the facility for discounted direct mail rates.

They get the rates because their bulk mail is dropped off directly at a processing facility.

If Dayton’s facility and a similar installation in Cincinnati close, local nonprofits would likely have to have their bulk mailings trucked 76 miles from Dayton to Columbus to receive the discounted rates.

If they don’t, costs to mail hundreds of thousands of newsletters, solicitations and updates would jump by $15,000 to $20,000 or more annually for major organizations such as the Victoria Theatre.

The extra job losses that could occur would be those employees at local private mail processing businesses — known as mailing houses — that serve local and national nonprofits by preparing mailings.

Those businesses, which include about a dozen locally, handle creative work, printing, addressing, delivering to the post office and maintaining databases of addresses.

Business reps say Columbus mail houses would be among those to get an immediate competitive edge with downsized postal service and Ohio mail processing concentrated in only two USPS centers — Columbus and Cleveland. Two-hundred-and-fifty-two processing plants are being studied  for closure nationwide, leaving 200 to absorb the extra loads. In Ohio, closures are proposed in Akron, Athens, Canton, Chillicothe, Cincinnati, Dayton, Steubenville, Toledo and Youngstown.

Christine Soward, president of Dayton Mailing Services at 100 S. Keowee St., Dayton, notes the business employs 55 full-timers and has 1,000 customers. By handling 1 million pieces of mail weekly, Dayton Mailing is one of the largest mail houses in the area.

“We are trying to figure out solutions for a work-around,” she said. “We don’t want that business to go away — it would be devastating.”

A U.S. Postal Service study said it would cut an estimated $14 million annually from its budget by moving Dayton’s 400-employee mail processing operation from East Fifth Street to a Columbus facility in 2012 or 2013.

Moving the mail processing center would also likely delay some mail delivery in Dayton by a day, USPS said. A final decision is expected next year, said David Van Allen, a USPS spokesman based in Cleveland.

Sue Stevens, vice president for marketing for Victoria Theatre, works with a $900,000 annual show marketing budget and oversees 400,000 to 500,000 pieces of mail annually.

She figures a potential financial hit of $15,000 per year with the loss of direct drop-off at the Dayton facility.

“The extra cost would definitely be a burden,” she said. “We’d have to scale back what we do. We would have to take money from another part of the budget. In these economic times, that is not easy to do.”

Sherry Hang, director of marketing for mail house Yeck Brothers Co., 2222 Arbor Blvd., Moraine, sees a direct private employment threat from the USPS cost- cutting. .

“How big is that economy in Dayton? It’s more than 400 postal employees,” Hang said.