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The Contract Postal Units (CPUs) program is a new initiative designed to
establish uniformity and standardization at off site locations for both current CPU
owners and other businesses. It is structured to increase postal revenue and
add foot traffic into the retailer's business. It provides a system that is
convenient, flexible, efficient, and low cost. Each location will be replicated again
and again in order to meet the expectations of our customers. Customers will be
assured of consistency in design, services, and competency.
We are seeking to form partnerships with retailers interested in co-branding. In
order to participate in this program, a retailer must become an exclusive agent of
the U.S. Postal Service selling only postal products and services at face value.
Listed below are the highlights of the new program:
• Equipment—The USPS may provide much of the necessary equipment
including counters, storage counters, slat wall, cash register, postage meter
base, electronic scale, and interior and exterior signage.
• Compensation — Guaranteed annual base salary, plus quarterly incentive
when actual sales exceed estimated revenue.
• Advertising — Grand Opening and special occasion advertising will promote
• the partnership of the retailer and the USPS. Promoting extended hours and
services will generate additional traffic into your business.
• Training — Customer service and product knowledge training are required
and will be provided to CPU employees by postal professionals. New
employees are required to receive 24 hours off-site and 16 hours on-site
training.
The CPU owner is responsible for adhering to the specifics of the written contract
agreement. Following are basic requirements under the new program.
• Exclusivity — Contractors must only sell postal products and services.
• Hours of Operation - To the extent possible, hours of the CPU should
closely match the hours for the other business.
• Professional Staff— Contractors must provide customer-oriented, product
and service knowledgeable employees to staff the CPU.
• Appearance — Contractors must maintain appearance standards for the unit
and employees.
The power of partnership —The main benefit to both parties is to provide added
value to customers and to differentiate from competitors. Pilot studies have
substantiated a 12-24% increase in the host retailer business based on the
increased postal traffic after normal business hours. Join us in this new
endeavor. Together we can provide extensive financial strength and solutions
that yield superior results in customer service.
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A 99.75 42 141 .75
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A2 99.75 54.25 154
A3 . 99.75 54.25 154
A4 99.75 54.25 154
A5 99.75 54.25 154
B 162.75 52.5 215.25
B1 162.75 52.5 215.25
B2 142.5 162.1 (+Office/Safe) 304.6
B3 142.5 162.1 (+Office/Safe) 304.6
B4. 187.2 52.4 239.6
B5 266(+Storage) 40 306
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' Small towns fight attempts to move post offices of 5
411
"Remember this tip
.. omie , : con dining...
AlATIDD I ORD Published Mo .ay,June 21,1999
;- Small towns fight attempts to move post
offices
44110 startribune.com
Nation'World Tom Hamburger/Star Tribune
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- "It's belittling," says the mayor of
DeGraff,Minn.,recalling the treatment his town, population 149,
has endured at the hands of the U.S. Postal Service.
When it comes to the postoffice,most people with complaints talk
about long lines and delayed or lost mail. But Mayor Joe Simmonds
of DeGraff, which is in Swift County in western Minnesota, and his
counterparts in dozens of towns across the country charge that the
Postal Service is taking the soul out of their communities by closing
• almost 100 postoffices last year and consolidating or moving many
others.
Such indictments get little attention in
big cities,but they have riled up enough
people in rural areas that powerful
organizations such as the Sierra Club t ,F
have declared postoffice location a top
priority in their fight against suburban
sprawl. And members of Congress from PhotoDavid Brewster
are offeringlegislation to Like that of many post offices in
both
parties g small towns,the future of the one in
require more public participation in Arco,Minn.,population 100,is
uncertain.
Postal Service decisions.
"Citizens have had more choices over which Elvis stamp they prefer
than over the future of their local postoffice," said Rep. Earl
Blumenauer,D-Ore., author of the PostOffice Community
Partnership Act. "Relocations can end up tearing the heart out of
historic downtowns."
Blumenauer's effort--matched in the Senate by Sen. Jim Jeffords,
R-Vt. --is opposed by the Postal Service as unnecessary. But the
• legislation continues to pick up support from a variety of groups,
including the Sierra Club, the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, the National Association of Homebuilders and the
National Governors Association. Those organizations see the
i .�: i .: ._ ... .. ...cis_ :.:_^ ..__.....1 ...a ..:L._,_. ...._
http://w.../article?thisSlug=POST21&date=21-Jun-99&word=office&word=post&word=office 6/24/99
'Small towns fight attempts to move post offices Page 2 of 5
iegisiauuii as a way 01 imnung sprawi aiiu pruinoung viuraiu wwu
centers.
• "Postoffices are essential to downtowns," said Richard Moe, a
Minnesota native who heads the National Trust for Historic
Preservation. "When a postoffice leaves a downtown, there can be a
ripple effect," he said. "When they remain, they help give a sense of
community to a town. You can't overstate their importance."
Simmonds offers DeGraff as a case in point.
"Since the postoffice was closed in 1996,we have lost a cafe,two
fertilizer businesses, a lumber yard and our gas station" as traffic
declined in town, he said. "I'm not saying all of this happened
because of the postoffice,but its departure sure didn't help."
Simmonds' anecdotal account fits with a National Historic Trust
survey conducted in Iowa a few years ago.The survey concluded
that 80 percent of the people who shopped downtown in Iowa
communities did so because of the postoffice. "The postoffice," the
Trust concluded, "serves as the anchor tenant that attracts shoppers
to Main Street businesses."
Not necessary
• The Postal Service would like folks to cool down. Last year, it
declared a moratorium on nonemergency post-office closings, and
postal officials say a legislative fix is unnecessary. "It would really
hamper our ability to move quickly to meet changing service
needs," said Norm Scherstrom, spokesman for the Postal Service in
Washington.
Officials in towns such as DeGraff and Fergus Falls, Minn.,
Auburn, Calif., or Pittsboro,N.C., don't see it that way. Leaders of
those cities have grappled with plans to close or move their towns'
postal facilities.
"The legislation is a good thing," said Paul Ogden, city manager of
Auburn, a city of 11,500 nestled in the foothills of the Sierra
Mountains about 30 miles from Sacramento. "A lot of economic
harm has been done to downtowns because of Postal Service
decisions."
Auburn has had two troubling calls from the Postal Service. Early
this decade, it lost a fight to keep the postoffice in its original
location downtown; and the building that housed the old postoffice
• still sits empty.
Two years ago, a branch postoffice in Auburn's historic district was
also slated for closure. That branch. believed to be the longest
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Small towns fight attempts to move post offices Page 3 of 5
continuously running postoffice west of the Mississippi,became
• the subject of an intense lobbying battle. The postoffice continues
to operate, thanks in part to a subsidy from the city of Auburn.
In Minnesota, Rep. David Minge, a Democrat, tried to save
Montevideo's downtown postoffice, as well as those in DeGraff and
Nassau. He was successful in Montevideo, and postal officials
agreed not to move to the postoffice to the outskirts of town. But
Nassau has been told its postoffice will be shuttered.
Rep. Collin Peterson, a Democrat, has weighed in to keep postal
facilities from moving out of the center of Fergus Falls,Bemidji
and other towns in his northern Minnesota district. Other
representatives from rural districts tell similar stories, and nearly
seven dozen,including Peterson, have cosponsored Blumenauer's
legislation.
Legislative changes
To give more weight to the planning and economic concerns of
towns, legislation proposed by Blumenauer and Jeffords would
require the Postal Service to follow "minimum community contact
procedures" that would apply to the relocation, new construction
• and closing of postoffices. Current rules require the Postal Service
to measure community reaction only when closing is planned.
In 1998, the Postal Service put a moratorium on closing its more
than 38,000 postoffices, except under limited circumstances. As a
result, closings dropped from 145 in 1997 to fewer than 100 last
year.
Paperwork was completed before the moratorium to close seven
small offices in southwestern Minnesota where postmasters have
retired or moved on,but those closures also seem unlikely
immediately, said Sheldon Manthei,regional manager of postoffice
operations in Willmar.
That includes the postoffice in Arco, a Lincoln County town of
about 100 people where the postoffice is open four hours a day and
averages seven daily transactions.
Dennis Healy,the Arco city clerk, said recently that having a
postoffice is "part of being a community. That's where people meet
and interact with one another." It's also critical to getting some
businesses into vacant buildings, he said. The cafe and locker plant
• next to the postoffice have closed, and the town has no grocery
store.
However, Manthei predicted that such offices eventually will be
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Small towns fight attempts to move post offices Page 4 of 5
closed by the Postal Service. "For some of them, it's the last thing
that's left in town, and I guess I personally have a problem as to why
the postoffice should be the last organization to preserve the town's
identity."
Despite the moratorium on closings, the Sierra Club and other
critics say downtown postoffices are disappearing through
relocation, which is largely unregulated.
The Postal Service says it often needs to move facilities to outlying
locations because of changing demographics,reduced lease
expenses, the changing nature of mail-sorting operations, and the
ease of getting large mail trucks onto highways.
The Post Service did not have figures on the number of postoffices
facing relocation. But a 1993 survey by the National Trust for
Historic Preservation found that 23 percent of responding
communities reported that their downtown postoffices faced
relocation or had been relocated.
Under Blumenauer's proposal, citizens could offer alternatives to
closing or moving a postoffice. Appeal rights would be expanded
as well.
• In Fergus Falls, the city became alarmed when the Postal Service
announced it wanted to move out of the town's old federal building
to a modern facility on the edge of town. The postoffice was the
main tenant in the federal building, which has also been used as a
federal district courthouse.
The proposed move has since been stalled and probably prevented.
And the old courthouse has been saved, thanks in large part to a
$700,000 appropriation passed last month by Congress. But the
fight was difficult.
"There was very much a feeling that the Postal Service seemed
concerned with one item -- their own efficiency," said Jim Nitchals,
Fergus Falls administrator. Ultimately, the Postal Service agreed to
maintain a retail presence downtown.
Mike Rooney, a retired postmaster from Benson,Minn., points out
that a small-town postoffice is "as much a social institution as a
mail facility. The postoffice in a small town is the community
meeting place. "When the postoffice goes, a community can lose its
identity," Rooney laments. "It's just another step in the deterioration
of rural America."
• -- Staff writer Robert Franklin contributed to this report.
startribune.com
NationlWorld _.. .
http://w.../article?thisSlug=POST21&date=21-Jun-99&word=office&word=post&word=office 6/24/99