PELKIE - No local post offices will close until after May 15 per a postal service-issued nationwide moratorium, but the Pelkie Post Office was recently announced as the latest of 11 local post offices to undergo a "discontinuance feasibility study" to possibly close and consolidate postal operations into the nearby Nisula Post Office.
Pelkie postal customers received a letter Jan. 20 with the announcement, and a public meeting with U.S. Postal Service representatives is scheduled for 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Pelkie Elementary School Gym.
"I would like your opinion concerning a possible change in the way postal services are provided," Paul Trybom, manager of (Upper Peninsula) Post Office Operations, said in the letter. "Our tentative plans will only lead to a formal proposal if we are satisfied that a maximum degree of regular and effective service can be provided."
The letter stated the reason Pelkie is being studied is a number of alternate sites within a short radius of the Pelkie office provide the sales of stamps and the mailing of most package items, referencing the Nisula and Baraga post offices.
"Currently the carrier delivers mail to Pelkie and Nisula customers," District Discontinuance Coordinator Melissa Vander Slik said. "They still will, but the Pelkie post office would no longer be an entity as a brick-and-mortar post office (if the study reveals it would be best to close it)."
The Nisula Post Office already went through its own discontinuance study, and through input received at a public meeting, optional comment forms and mailed surveys, it will stay open, as will the Covington office.
"It seems like (the review) is going the wrong direction," retired Pelkie postmaster Marj Krumm said, referring to the fewer than 100 Nisula postal customers. "It seems strange to me that the post office is considering inconveniencing close to 600 (Pelkie) postal delivery points. ... I'm encouraging everybody I see to go to the meeting, because this is their only chance to say something."
Krumm, who served as postmaster for nearly 20 years before retiring in 2010, added the Pelkie Post Office is 10.7 miles away from the Nisula Post Office (unlike the 9.4 miles listed on the letter to customers). It's also on Pelkie Road, which Krumm calls "a major tributary to all the people from central and western U.P. - it gets a lot of business."
Pelkie's public meeting will be just the first step in a long review process, and the moratorium is still in place until May 15. Neither Vander Slik nor Sabrina Todd, USPS media relations representative for the Greater Michigan District, could explain why Pelkie was just recently added to the list, but Todd clarified that the review process was never stalled as part of the moratorium.
"No post office or mail processing facility will be closed or consolidated until May 15," she said, but the postal service "will continue to follow all applicable guidelines. ... That would entail public meetings as well."
Todd reassured the eight local post offices awaiting their fate that nothing would happen until May 15, but frustration is building among local representatives.
Painesdale, Ahmeek, Sidnaw, Watton, Skanee, Rockland, Copper City and Greenland post offices are all anxiously awaiting their fate after public meetings were held throughout the second half of 2011.
"Until we hear something from headquarters, we have no information to pass along," Todd said.
Postmasters, officers in charge and other local representatives are not permitted to share information with the media, though their frustration was evident.
"It's like we dropped off the face of the Earth or something," said one local rep. Another added, "I have not heard a thing," while still another said, "that's pretty much how it's been. It's going to be a nailbiter."
The Postal Regulatory Commission, an independent federal agency that provides regulatory oversight of the USPS, ultimately renders all decisions to close post offices.