Rockville Centre postal routes reduced

The Rockville Centre Post Office has merged mail routes in the village, reducing the number from 33 to 30 in the second week of July.

The change follows a nationwide trend of mergers in an effort to ensure that mail carriers have full workdays, said U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman Maureen Marion.

According to Marion, there has been a move away from First Class mail in the past decade. In fact, she said, the volume of mail has fallen in a “dramatic and serious way.”

Rising stamp prices, resulting from USPS budget cuts, and the increasing popularity of email have been blamed for the dropoff.

In recent years, the handling of First Class mail has accounted for most of the Postal Service’s workload, Marion said. After recently reviewing its practices, the USPS decided to make changes to its processing and delivery. “So, across the country, we have been doing reviews and adjustments to our delivery routes that help us to reposition our resources to the work,” she said. “Our obligation to the carriers is to give them eight-hour workdays.”

Marion noted that although the overall number of routes in the village had decreased by three, it was difficult to precisely describe the changes because parts of routes have been merged in the interest of efficiency. Marion emphasized that despite the changes, the USPS’s obligation to its customers remained “regular and routine,” although she allowed that there might be a difficult transition period.

A number of residents have expressed their disapproval of the route changes, noting that their mail seems to be arriving far later in the day than it had previously.

“Due to this change, instead of receiving my mail at 12:30 p.m. or 1 p.m. like I have in the last 12-plus years of living here,” said Beth Beyrer, who lives on Pine Street, “I’m now receiving my mail as late as 5:30 or 6 p.m.”

Beyrer, who operates a photography business out of her home, said that receiving mail late in the day is a problem. “Everything now has to wait until the next business day, and everything is delayed a day going out to clients,” she said.