EDITOR:

U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman sent this letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy after a disappointing response from U.S. Post Office officials at the public input meeting on the future of the Iron Mountain Processing and Distribution Center in Kingsford —

I write to you following the April 1, 2024, public input meeting on the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) proposed changes to the Iron Mountain Processing and Distribution Center (PDC) in Kingsford, Michigan. My staff and I attended the meeting, and the wholly deficient presentation by USPS prompted this letter. While I had initially hoped that USPS would use the meeting as an opportunity to clarify its plans for the facility, the overly bureaucratic double-speak of the agency’s presenters, along with their ignorance of the most basic facets of the Iron Mountain and Kingsford area were inexcusable.

At the meeting, the expertise and passion of those postal workers, business owners and community members in attendance were evident. Yet rather than listen to their well-founded concerns and engage in genuine dialogue, the agency’s presenters chose to stonewall and obfuscate, opting to provide distorted and incomplete answers to attendees’ questions. For example, when attendees raised concerns over changes in the mail collection schedule and the elimination of one-day shipping in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the presenters insisted that the agency was continuing to meet its nationwide delivery standard. Of course, substantiating this claim requires USPS to manipulate its delivery lead times — packages dropped off at the Iron Mountain PDC are not considered to have entered the mail stream until the next day, effectively adding an additional, uncounted day to delivery times.

Further, when questioned about USPS’s plan to avoid delays in the delivery of prescription drugs from the Oscar G. Johnson Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the presenters appeared entirely unaware of the hospital’s presence in Iron Mountain. Michigan’s First Congressional District has one of the highest percentages of veteran residents per capita of any district in the country, and many of these veterans rely on the mail service for the timely delivery of their prescriptions. USPS’s ignorance of the Iron Mountain VAMC’s existence and importance for veterans living throughout the Upper Peninsula serves to demonstrate that the changes currently being proposed to the Iron Mountain PDC have been ushered in with zero understanding of the community and its needs. This is just one embarrassing example of USPS’s “review” process mentioned during the public meeting.

While I am sure USPS will once again attempt to assure me that no final decision has been made on the Iron Mountain PDC — as was stressed multiple times by the presenters at the April 1 meeting — the agency’s most recent response to my letter of March 6 states that “It is anticipated that the facility will maintain the following operations once converted to an LPC.”

This language (and elsewhere) reads like USPS has already made up its mind to convert the facility to a Local Processing Center. Please let me know how USPS plans to rectify this substandard review process before the entire Upper Peninsula of Michigan is further disregarded due to bureaucratic incompetence.

I look forward to the agency’s prompt response to the questions and concerns outlined above.

U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman

R-Watersmeet