My name is Brian Brouillette and I am the board president (as an unpaid volunteer) of TRICO Opportunities in Kingsford. Our organization works with persons with disabilities within our local communities.

We operate a paper and cardboard recycling center as part of our Skill Building Program to assist our program participants in developing work skills with the goal of obtaining jobs in the community.

We collect and process recyclable material from local businesses and residents and sell the baled material to help fund our programs and services.

For many years, TRICO collected undeliverable mail from the Kingsford Mail Processing Facility, located about a block from our own facility. We also collected material from nine other post offices in our area. TRICO was able to pick up the undeliverable mail at no cost to the U.S. Postal Service.

We feel that this was a win-win situation as we helped our local post offices and at the same time we are able to continue to provide work for our program participants.

Peter Rossato, the recycling coordinator at TRICO Opportunities, contacted the postmaster of the processing facility and learned the materials are being sent downstate. He proposed once again that TRICO would pick up, at no cost to the USPS.

The USPS continues to state that they are losing money with their operation. It makes no sense to pay for both traveling and labor to have these materials processed elsewhere when the USPS can have it done at TRICO at no cost.

TRICO has reached out to both the offices of U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman and U.S. Sen. Gary Peters to get help with this issue but to no avail.

I am asking the public to write their lawmakers and see what can be done about this.