Postal Service hits pause on moving processing to Denver after pushback
A May 8 letter from 24 senators, including Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, prompts postmaster general to suspend plan until at least January 2025
Jonson Kuhn/The Aspen Times
The U.S. Postal Service will pause a plan to reroute mail from the Western Slope to Denver after dozens of Senators from both parties protested the changes.
“While USPS claims these changes overall will improve service while reducing costs, there is evidence to the contrary in locations where USPS has implemented changes so far,” according to a May 8 letter from 24 senators, including Sen. Michael Bennet.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said, in response to the senators’ concerns, he will pause implementation of that plan until at least January 2025.
“We will not advance these efforts without advising you of our plans to do so and then only at a moderated pace of implementation,” he wrote in a May 9 letter to one of the senators who had expressed concern.
The proposed changes, which are part of the Postal Service’s attempts to modernize the mail service and make it financially sustainable, would have downgraded the Grand Junction processing facility and pushed all local mail from across the Western Slope to a Denver facility for processing.
That means letters, invitations, prescriptions, bills, and paychecks sent from somewhere like Vail or Aspen to another resident of their town or region would have to travel all the way to Denver before coming back to the recipient.
Residents have expressed concerns about how snowstorms, mudslides, and other road closures along the I-70 corridor could slow those deliveries.
“We are concerned that USPS’ plan could impact local mail delivery when these delays occur,” Bennet and Sen. John Hickenlooper wrote in an April letter to the Postal Service, “which is alarming when constituents already suffer from inconsistent and unreliable mail service.”
The two both asked the Postal Service to pause the plan and instead complete an analysis of the impacts of the proposal. They’ve also said they want more information on whether the changes would affect the service’s workforce in the region.
In his letter, DeJoy said the Postal Serivce doesn’t see the planned changes as hurting services.
“Rather, they are important elements of achieving a network that can provide greater service reliability in a cost-effective manner,” he wrote.
He said the career workforce members wouldn’t see layoffs and that the changes would help them more efficiently deliver mail.
Responding to the announced pause, Bennet released a statement saying he was “pleased.”
“I’ll continue to work with USPS to ensure they address the potential effects on local mail delivery, especially in rural areas,” he said.
A spokesperson from the Postal Service didn’t respond to questions about which specific communities in Colorado would be impacted by the change, but the Grand Junction facility processes mail generally for the Western Slope.
Elliott Wenzler is the Western Slope politics reporter for The Aspen Times and its sister publications in Glenwood Springs, Vail, Steamboat Springs, Summit County, and Grand County.
