Postal Closing To Take Money, Jobs

A Remote Encoding Center in East Allegheny will close this fall after 13 years of operation. The facility was meant as a temporary fix. Employees would read mailing addresses that machines could not recognize, more than 90% of all mail, and key the correct address. United States Postal Service spokesman Tad Kelley says they planned on 5 years, but added duties to the center. Now, machines can read almost every hand-written address.

The closing will take with it more than $20,000 in local taxes for the borough of East Allegheny and almost 300 jobs. Mayor Louis Payne says that's a lot of money for their municipality, and now they'll have to cancel some capital improvement and recreation projects planned for this fall and next summer. He says he knows the facility was always meant to be temporary, but he wishes he'd had more notice of the closure. When the center was built in 1995, East Allegheny was in financial distress. Payne says they were on the way out, but the tax revenue has helped them stay in the black since. Jobs will be available to management and union employees after the November 14th closing. 288 non-union workers will receive job counseling.