TULSA — CORRECTION: The original version of this article incorrectly stated the public meeting in Tulsa would be held in May. The date for the meeting is March 7, 2024.

The United States Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, announced in 2021 that his agency would undergo a complete overhaul, promising to make the service solvent by 2023.

But in 2023, the USPS lost roughly $6.5 billion - and saw a reduction in usage of roughly eight percent.

[Hear the KRMG In Depth Report on USPS plans for Tulsa’s mail sorting facility HERE]

Still, DeJoy remains committed to his plan, dubbed “Delivering for America,” and it involves a concerted effort to streamline and modernize the postal service, including creating regional sorting centers to replace many of the local facilities.

That is about to happen in Tulsa, it appears, as USPS has announced a public meeting to be held at 3:00 p.m. Thursday, May 7th at the Hardesty Regional Library, 8316 E 93rd Street.

Julia Weare, President of American Postal Workers Union Local 1348, tells KRMG the time and venue chosen for that meeting demonstrate the USPS’ lack of interest in hearing from the public about potentially shutting down the Tulsa sorting facility, turning it into a “Local Processing Center (LPC),” and moving all sorting in the state to the facility in Oklahoma City.

The meeting room, which she says was booked in January, several weeks before the union was notified, holds only a few dozen people, and the time is not conducive to high attendance.

“People pick up their kids at 3:00, that’s prime time for school let out and everything,” she told KRMG Tuesday. “They picked this time that’s inconvenient for the public, because they don’t want - they truly don’t want to hear what the public has to say. They’re trying to bypass what the public wants.”

The USPS also put up a page on Survey Monkey, which doesn’t appear to actually ask any questions and offers almost no information at all about what is being planned for Tulsa.

Meanwhile, Weare says she has serious concerns about moving all the sorting of mail in the state to Oklahoma City.

It would mean that anything dropped into a mailbox in Tulsa, for example, would have to travel to OKC, get postmarked and sorted, then taken back to Tulsa or to wherever its ultimate destination might be, and she believes that will slow delivery significantly.

“That adds one to two days on just your letters being processed, or your packages being processed,” she said.

It would also mean people mailing tax returns from most anywhere in Oklahoma will no longer be able to drop them in a mailbox the morning of April 15th, and still expect them to beat the deadline.

Mail-in ballots would also have to be mailed earlier, as they must be postmarked by 7 p.m. on election day.

She said it’s also concerning that with only one sorting facility in Oklahoma, a natural disaster or mechanical breakdown there would mean the state’s mail would have to travel all the way to Houston, Texas.

And Houston, she says, is in no way ready to handle additional business - it is already experiencing a major backup.

“Packages that have been sitting there since December, honestly,” she told KRMG. “They’re sitting there unworked because those docks that all the packages come in - it’s too full. So, it’s so full that they can’t take stuff off the trucks and put on the dock to work it, so they’re having to work the stuff on the docks before they can unload the trucks.”

And that, she says, is not a situation unique to Houston.

“That’s how it’s going at the RPDCs, these regional - they’re calling them regional - centers, because they’re overwhelming them with everything that’s coming in,” Weare said. ”They don’t have the equipment, they don’t have the manpower, they don’t have the necessities to run this mail properly.”

But the USPS will likely move forward with its plans for the Tulsa facility.

KRMG contacted the media representative for Oklahoma, Becky Hernandez, who offices in San Antonio, Texas.

She said she’d be happy to answer questions and address some of the concerns after that public meeting on March 7th.

In the meantime, she sent KRMG this statement via email:

“Under the Delivering for America plan, the Postal Service is focused on modernizing its aging, inefficient network through targeted $40 billion in investments, and on establishing new or reimagined facilities that support redesigned processing, transportation, and delivery networks. The Postal Service regularly reviews its processing and delivery network footprints to ensure its facilities and services are best aligned to provide increased service reliability to customers and a better workplace experience for employees. The intent is to make more efficient use of Postal Service resources — equipment, facilities, staffing and transportation. For each location, we will disclose the potential savings ahead of a community meeting and/or when public input is solicited.”