Less than two weeks after agreeing to an eight-month pause on the ongoing consolidation of U.S. Postal Service operations, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy issued a nine-page letter last Tuesday detailing what will be paused, and what will not.

The letter offered a clarification of Postal Service Mail Processing Facility Reviews and continued work to Regional Processing and Distribution Centers, Sorting and Delivery Centers, and Local Processing Centers.

DeJoy officially agreed May 9 to halt consolidations through January 2025 after 26 senators, led by U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, signed a May 8 letter asking DeJoy to do so until the Postal Regulatory Commission can study the impacts of the postmaster’s Delivering for America plan, which the letter notes has already brought “irrevocable changes” to the postal system.

Consolidation efforts include a range of postal network changes but focus largely on Mail Processing Facility Review of some 60 of 427 processing plants under DeJoy’s plan. Postal officials say consolidation will bring “financial sustainability and service excellence,” while postal customers, employees and government representatives contend with ongoing delays to mail service due to reduced truck routes and the relocation of regional operations to larger hubs.

DeJoy addressed last Tuesday’s letter to Sen. Peters and Cc’d more than two dozen senators who signed the May 8 letter. In it, DeJoy said: “Despite the significant efforts of the consistent and transparent communications we have provided about our Delivering for America Plan initiatives, confusion continues to proliferate in some circles about the work we have underway to rescue the United States Postal Service.”

The letter said that “further implementations resulting from Mail Processing Facility reviews” could be paused because the USPS is “now in the process of scheduling our work for this initiative, which we expected to accomplish over the next 18 to 24 months.”

“Starting implementation of these changes after the first of the year is a logical choice considering where we are in the planning cycle, the additional work we have ongoing, our current efforts to stabilize service and the upcoming election,” DeJoy said.

According to the letter, aspects of the 10-year plan that remain ongoing include the completion of 60 initiated Regional Processing and Distribution Centers, and investments to 190 Local Processing Centers, including facilities in Eugene and Medford being transitioned to LPCs after a portion of operations were moved to a regional facility in Portland.

Additional operations that won’t be paused include the creation of Sorting and Delivery Centers — a new concept that involves aggregating small delivery units into larger, fully renovated and equipped delivery units — and changes to Postal Service air transportation and supporting network, as well as a ground transportation network involving 50,000 truck transport trips per day.

DeJoy pointed out that the Postal Service endured more than $100 billion in financial losses over the past decade and had been “well on its way” to losing another $160 billion in the next decade. Financial struggles, he noted, have led to deferred maintenance and an “ill-equipped, operationally ineffective, and devastated infrastructure with poor operating strategy and discipline.”

DeJoy said, “Our facilities are often unpleasant places to work, our vehicles are ancient, and we are ill-equipped in most of our operations to efficiently engage in our work.”

U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat who first spoke out against the consolidation last summer, said he is concerned with changes taking place at the expense of postal customers.

“The only ‘consistent and transparent’ aspect of Postmaster Louis DeJoy’s poorly packaged Delivering for America Plan is its stunning lack of consistency and transparency,” Merkley said in a written statement to the Rogue Valley Times.

“It’s clear DeJoy is feeling the sting of being publicly pressured by myself and my colleagues into finally admitting his move to downgrade processing and distribution centers in Oregon and other parts of the nation is fraught with problems — so much so that he recently committed to immediately stop implementing all network changes for the rest of this year.”

Merkley said DeJoy now appears to be “trying to spin his pause into a move that further progresses his plan.”

“I’m not fooled, and neither are the countless Oregonians who reached out to my office to report the USPS delays and degraded services they are facing that stem from the downgrades,” Merkley’s statement continued.

“As the freeze on additional downgrades is in effect, I will continue to press to make this pause permanent, and push DeJoy to bring relief to Oregon where these damaging changes have already been implemented.”

Medford postmaster Casey Kamps was unable to comment on the consolidation of local postal operations due to USPS media protocol.

Jeremy Schilling, president of the American Postal Workers Union Local 342 voiced frustration that DeJoy’s plan had caused irreversible harm to postal services in Southern Oregon.

When the USPS initiated changes to Medford’s Sage Road facility, for example, a machine used to sniff bio-agents and face outgoing mail was destroyed and disposed of.

Schilling told the Times that DeJoy’s statement suggested that his implementations don’t require input or oversight from the Postal Regulatory Commission, which Schilling said he believes is untrue. Schilling said via text message Thursday that the public should not have to pay “higher prices for slower service” and that DeJoy’s so-called pause “would not help residents of Jackson, Josephine and Klamath counties.”

“This short delay does not address the ongoing transportation issues that are often leaving mail and parcels either overnight in post offices or sitting on docks in processing centers all day as their dispatch trucks were already too full. The residents of Southern Oregon deserve timely delivery of their mail and parcels. None of us should worry whether or not our ballots will be counted because the postmark machine has been removed and now letters are not cancelled until they reach Portland, the next day,” Schilling said.

“We are encouraged by the representation from Senators Merkley and Wyden and look forward to fighting these deep austerity measures further. As a working-class region, we often feel the burden of economic downturn (more than metropolitan areas do) … We continue to ask our friends, neighbors, family, anyone who will listen to call their senators and congresspeople and demand action to keep our mail sortation local, to demand that the Medford postmark machine is returned, and demand an end to the disastrous elements of PMG DeJoy’s ‘10-Year Plan.’”