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New Youngstown Postmaster Awaits Challenges
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Youngstown’s new postmaster says he is looking forward to the challenges of the position.Appointed Youngstown’s 34th postmaster effective April 21, Warren native Thomas Kerns, a 26-year veteran of the U.S. Postal Service, was officially sworn in Wednesday during a ceremony at the 7th District Court of Appeals.
“Basically our biggest challenge is the fact that our business plan doesn’t match today’s economy," Kerns said. "We’re trying to right size our operations. We’re losing money daily just because of the antiquated way that we have to run our business, so we’re trying to make adjustments and changes based on what’s needed for us to survive.”
One of the adjustments Kerns faces in his new position is the consolidation with Cleveland of the Youngstown mail processing and distribution center, one of 140 such centers across the country expected to close by 2013.
Youngstown has 278 employees servicing 82,716 deliveries including the city and Austintown, Boardman, Poland and Liberty townships.
“It’s still tentative. There hasn’t been an exact date of what is actually going to leave Youngstown and what is going to stay. Those plans are changing weekly,” he said. “Most of that is incumbent on what the Senate and the House [of Representatives] do as far as passing the bills we need to free up the money that we need in order to run our business.”
The U.S. Postal Service is “handcuffed” by union contracts and at the mercy of Congress, he said. “We’re required to pay over $5.5 billion a year in advance for retirement for people 75 years in advance. These people aren’t even born yet and we’re trying to pay ahead on their health insurance for when they retire. We’re the only government entity that is required to do that,” he companied. “That’s really putting a hurt on our finances and [changing] that would help a lot in us being able to move forward with modernizing our vehicles and downsizing our workforce and things like that.”
The Postal Service is losing $25 million per day and has “too much capacity,” said David VanAllen, Postal Service regional spokesman. Rather than running several processing plants at 30% to 50% capacity, the service is consolidating them so those that remain will run near or at capacity, which keeps the cost of postage down, he said.
“Just like a newspaper used to have a printing press on premises and now two or three newspapers might share a printing press because subscriptions are down, it’s pretty much the same as the Postal Service,” VanAllen said. “Mailing is down. We’ve lost 25% of our first class mail since 2006, it’s in continual decline, and meanwhile the population is growing. We’re delivering to more and more addresses but less and less mail, and mail is what brings in our revenue.”
While the processing center is slated to close, the Youngstown post office “isn’t going anywhere,” he assured. “That’s going to be there for as long as we can foresee into the future,” he said.
Kerns has “a wealth of knowledge when it comes to postal operations,” said Todd Hawkins, district manager for the Postal Service’s Northern Ohio Performance Cluster. His recent assignments include serving as Warren’s 32nd postmaster and manager of post office operations. He is a “great fit” for the Youngstown position because of his operations knowledge as well as his interpersonal skills, he said.
“Tom has always been a person that’s been really good at driving efficiencies,” a skill he put to work in improving Warren’s operations when he became postmaster there in 2008, Hawkins said.
Under Kerns, Warren went from being one of the worst-run post offices to among the best, said Veronica Rice, Youngstown’s 32nd postmaster.
Kerns said he is pleased to be part of the “renaissance” the Youngstown area is going through. “I’m very excited about the positive things that are happening here in the Mahoning Valley and I’m glad to be able to participate in that,” he remarked. “I’m very impressed with the way that the downtown area has revived and survived and I’m looking forward to being a part of that growth.”
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.