by Adam Shear
WACO - The United States Postal Service plans to start their consolidation of processing centers around the country this week, but contrary to early reports the Waco Annex sorting center will survive those cuts.
According to a USPS spokesperson from Austin, the Waco facility, on Imperial Dr., will stay open and not be amongst the 48 centers closing because of a new system for managing overnight mail.
The Waco Post Office Annex was originally on a list of about 250 processing centers around the country that the postal service planned to close by 2014.
However, the USPS says due to an overwhelming amount of feedback from customers, the postal service decided to re-evaluate some of those facilities, including Waco.
Instead of closing some of the processing center the USPS found another way to save money by tweaking their overnight first class mailing service.
A person living in Waco will still be able to ship mail locally overnight using First Class, but shipping something to Dallas or Austin will take two to three days instead of one.
The new processing system will save over 100 jobs in Waco.
"For Waco it's looking pretty good. I think our service performance there is really good," said Sam Bolen, a spokesman for USPS. "We have good employees that work there and I think you probably won't see many changes there in the distant future."
Bolen added that the postal service plans to re-examine other processing centers around December, but any futures closures would not happen until 2014.
According to Bolen the postal service plans to close roughly 80 facilities then, but Waco is currently not on that list either.
