In a sketchy announcement on a hard-to-find website, the U.S. Postal Service said Tuesday that it will move mail processing out of North Platte to Denver.

The move is part of a national effort by U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to process most of the U.S. mail in 60 mega-centers around the country, including a mega-center in Denver. Nebraska’s only full service processing center will be in Omaha.

The move is part of a 10-year plan to overhaul the postal system and reduce its financial losses. More effort will go into handling packages and completing delivery to individual residences for private carries such as Amazon.

Regional processing centers, like North Platte’s, that came under review for closing were quietly announced in January on the same hard–to-find website. A public announcement was required by law. Opposition grew steadily as the news spread.

In North Platte, postal worker and local union president Lisa Watson tipped the Bulletin to the announcement of the review.

Soon after the Bulletin reported it, the North Platte Chamber of Commerce, Congressman Adrian Smith and Sen. Deb Fischer wrote letters of objection, saying the change would greatly harm to businesses and individuals, especially in rural areas.

Sen. Pete Ricketts did not make a public statement, but with Smith, he sought additional information about the impact on the North Platte Processing and Distribution Center.

“The North Platte P&DC plays an essential role to ensure efficient and dependable delivery for rural communities in our state, and is a key employer in the North Platte area,” Ricketts said in a letter to DeJoy in March.

“Any actions that change North Platte P&DC mail processing operations should not result in potential reassignments for Nebraskans working at the center,” he wrote.

Critics of the plan pointed out that people depend on the mail for medicines, business transactions and, of course, mail-in ballots.

At the mandatory public meeting in North Platte on March 28, 275 people attended and 44 spoke, according to the USPS. Only one person expressed support for the move. USPS sent two managers, Kathy Hand of Omaha and Mark Inglett of Kansas City.

Those opposed spoke of ever-longer delays in mail delivery under the existing system and said sending mail 250 miles to Denver is bound to increase delays. Retired postal workers said they are dismayed at how lax the mail service has become. A banker said DeJoy’s plan will never work financially. People with concerns about the ramifications of the move complained about the lack of details.

The plan is not going well. The first two mega-centers to open in Richmond, Va. and Atlanta, Ga. are delivering less mail on time and are more expensive to operate then expected. The situation is Atlanta is so dire it’s considered the Bermuda Triangle of the postal service — the place where mail disappears without a trace.

DeJoy was called before Congress on April 16, where he was questioned and criticized at length. He was told to provide the details of the plan to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Services by May 1, but there is no evidence that he did.

Four separate bills have been introduced in Congress to stop the consolidation until overall performance improves, the latest by Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, which is called the Protecting Access to Rural Carriers for Every Location (PARCEL) act, but none of them are on a fast track.

USPS says that the North Platte regional distribution and processing center will be downsized to a local processing center, but has not specified what, if any, mail will continue to be received, sorted and sent to individual mailboxes from North Platte.

Also, USPS has said all along that there would be no career layoffs as part of the initiative; however, a look at the few actual numbers that were published Tuesday shows 15 jobs will be lost in North Platte — 11 in mail processing and four in maintenance.

Ten of the mail processing jobs will be moved to Denver.

Watson, who has said all along that jobs would be lost in North Platte, thanked the community Thursday for its support.

She said, “The fight nationwide for our post office is not over. We as community members can continue to put pressure on our senators and Congress to get this stopped.”

“As far as the actual moving the mail from the North Platte facility to Denver, as the president of the APWU Local 619, I do not agree with it because it does not make logical sense to me,” she said.

North Platte Mayor Brandon Kelliher said the decision to make the move “has left our community disheartened.”

“The North Platte processing center has long been an essential hub for our region, connecting families, businesses and communities. Any degradation in its operations diminishes our ability to stay connected,” Kelliher said.

Chamber and DevCo President Gary Person, who is normally diplomatic, said he is “thoroughly disappointed and disgusted with the lack of leadership at the highest level of the USPS. This is one more dagger in the heart of rural America. They truly do not care about rural and small-town citizens across America. The level of hypocrisy was on full display at the local public hearing when we heard about their game plan, and everyone knows the standards they talked about will never be met.”

“The brave local USPS employees kept working hard despite being short-handed with so many positions unfilled (on purpose by the USPS leadership),” Person said, “and those courageous employees spoke out. I would encourage the local USPS employees that are impacted to stay in the community and fill other job openings here. We need them to stay in our workforce. Clearly, the USPS leadership cannot be trusted with their futures.”

(This report was updated Wednesday morning at 10:45 a.m.)

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