Postal work going to Fargo
September 28, 2011 at 1:50 am in The Jamestown Sun
Jamestown’s mail-processing operations will be relocated to Fargo by January 2012, the U.S. Postal Service announced Tuesday.
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Postal work going to Fargo
10 Comments
too bad for Jamestown to lose about 10 decent jobs. It’s really kind of amazing though that moving that sorting operation to Fargo will only save them $12,000/yr. I wonder how much money they spent studying that….. Doesn’t even make much of a dent in their billion dollar deficit.
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It actually makes a lot of sense to move the plant to Fargo. Let’s face it, Jamestown is losing population, plus the 9 counties surrounding Jamestown have lost around 4000 people in the last 10 years.
Add to it that the people remaining are sending and receiving less mail, it simply isn’t economically viable to keep postal operations here.
Yes, it’s 15 jobs probably affecting 30 people, and those 30 people won’t be here any more to support the businesses that are left and that probably will cause others to lay off workers or close. That is the nature of the beast when you are in a dying community.
The handwriting has been on the wall for 30 years. The mail processing plant isn’t the first business to leave Jamestown and it most certainly won’t be the last.
As a bonus, it’s saving the Postal Service money, and that’s the bottom line. Good day.
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Obviously you realize that those jobs affect more than 30 people overall. You are quite the troll, though. I have to hand it to you, you don’t even live here, but seem to care so much. What passion you have.
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I used to live in Jamestown, so I feel I have every right to point out what has happened over time.
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I’m not heartbroken to see this happen. The processors here trash my mail. Almost every magazine I receive is bent in half with a huge crease right down the middle. I’ve had mail that says DO NOT BEND also bent in half. They don’t seem to care about my mail so I don’t care that the place is shutting down.
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i could be right or wrong but doesnt everyone always want a raise? Well this will help and hurt. First off, if we wouldnt be so money hungry we wouldnt have to be moving things around because we would be left with money. But it seems this day everyone is more money more money. Well it eventually bites you in the butt.
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actually, labor cost is not the issue. these jobs will still be done, just in Fargo rather than Jamestown, by people making the same amount of money. The $12,000 a year is apparently just the cost to run the Jamestown facility, not including labor costs. I wonder if these 15 people would have been willing to take $70 less a month each (totals $12,600 less each year), to make it cheaper to run the Jamestown faciity rather than move the jobs to Fargo. Nobody likes a paycut, but maybe $70 less would be better than no job. Probably not evan an option though, due to the union contract.
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The economic loss to jamestown if far, far greater than $12,000 a year. If you figure 15 employees, and I’m not sure if these are full time equivalents or not, but we’ll figure they make $30,000 a year. That’s $450,000 just in labor that leaves jamestown.
Now the Postal Service doesn’t own the building where the mail was sorted, and I’m assuming they don’t be renting that portion of the building either (or maybe they drop the whole building, IDK). At any rate, There will be warehouse space that someone isn’t getting paid for.
I’m sure there are a few other things I’ve missed, but I’d say a half a million dollars just left your community.
Next is that will take two days for mail to go from jamestown to Bismarck or Aberdeen, SD. I doubt that can be considered an asset by any business looking to relocate to jamestown.
**Not being negative, just truthful**
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Fred Brown you know that the bulk of those 15 employees and that $450,000 is being paid to mortgages that are housed out of state or out of Jamestown. The shopping that most of those employees do either online or in person is done out of town which is again taking most of that money out of town. So of the $450,000 annually probably 80% of it is already leaving town.
What Jamestown needs to focus on is jobs creation to start keeping it’s young people in town. The current thinking in Jamestown is to protect it’s aging people and discount the thoughts and actions of it’s young families until they leave town.
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This is in response to the Larry Pecka letter regarding the closing of the sorting center here. What I really thought was odd was that he complains about Fargo and Grand Forks getting grants to improve airport runways (what does that have to do with the Postal Service?), but fails to mention that tiny Jamestown gets $2 million in EAS subsidies, plus gets the same grants to improve it’s runways and terminal.
For the record, the Postal Service can’t use tax money, so comparing grants to cutting postal operations doesn’t apply. And people accuse me of making stuff up.
***Not being negative, just truthful***
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