Business Owner Says City Will Lose If Postal Service Shutters Tulsa Center

The US Postal Service is holding a meeting in Tulsa Thursday evening to discuss the proposed closing of the local United States Postal Service processing and distribution center and moving its operations to Oklahoma City.

The meeting will be held at Tulsa Tech to get community feedback from anyone affected by the possible closure - like direct mail services.

American Direct Mail Services is bustling with holiday business. The company is one of about a dozen in Tulsa that presorts business or non-profit mailers like flyers, brochures and coupons, and gets a discount of almost 20 percent from the postal service. 

Owner Rick Butefish says that's how they make money.

"Provide the discount to the customer for doing the work of the post office allows us to do and everyone shares in that savings," Butefish explained.

The Tulsa mail facility at 21st and 91st East is the largest of the four centers in Oklahoma possibly closing. It employs 573 people. Four-hundred of those employees would transfer to Oklahoma City; the rest would be laid off under the plan.

For Butefish's company, he says postal service customers will ultimately pay more for less service.

"We will presort it, we'll take it to the Tulsa facility, they will truck it to Oklahoma City, it will get processed and then it will be trucked back here. At some point, someone is going to have to pay that cost," Butefish said.

That's one of many reasons postal workers and their union are fighting the proposal, saying it would change the way Tulsans get their mail.

Union leaders say local overnight delivery will not be possible. The postal service says the standard would be two to three days.

Butefish plans to be at the public input meeting.

"We will be losing and the city of Tulsa will be losing," he said.

The Tulsa meeting gets starts at 6:30 p.m. at Tulsa Technology Career Service Center at 3420 South Memorial Drive.

11/29/2011 Related Story: Post Office Holding Public Meeting Concerning Future Of Tulsa Distribution Center

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