Save the Berkeley Post Office
  • Home
    • Make a Video
  • Calendar
  • Contact
  • Activist's Guide

Press Release

4/27/2013

0 Comments

 

BERKELEY TO APPEAL POST OFFICE SALE

Picture

Picture
PRESS RELEASE (April 25, 2013) Activists working to save the Berkeley Post Office were extremely disappointed--but not surprised--to learn Monday that the United States Postal Service made the decision to relocate and sell Berkeley’s landmarked Downtown Post Office.  

However, the USPS Facilities Vice-President can reverse this decision.  The Save the Berkeley Post Office Committee and the city of Berkeley will appeal, and they encourage everyone to write and appeal.  From Georgetown to Santa Monica, the USPS is selling historic post offices that were entrusted to it.  Save the Berkeley Post Office is working with the National Post Office Collaborate to take joint legal action with other communities to stop these sales.  Anyone can file a written appeal.  All appeals must be postmarked by May 7, 2013, and mailed to:
Vice President, Facilities
Facilities Implementation–Pacific Area
1300 Evans Ave. Ste. 200
San Francisco CA 94188-0200

Save the Berkeley Post Office invites all who want to stop the sale to come to a community meeting at 7 p.m.
Thursday, May 2, 2013,
at 2133 University Ave near Walnut.


Berkeley residents are united in wanting the US Postal Service to stay in its current central and historic location, and for the federal government to retain ownership of this public building.  Author and geographer Gray Brechin remarked that “As elsewhere, the public comment is pro forma; the unanimous opposition of the impacted community counts for precisely nothing.”   Berkeley businesses, churches and non-profits want bulk mail receiving services available in downtown Berkeley where it is accessible and convenient.

In April the Postal Service moved ahead with the sale of three other historic post office buildings: the Wall Street post office in La Jolla, Old Chelsea on West 18th Street in New York City, and the Bronx General Post Office on the Grand Concourse. As in Berkeley, these three post offices contain New Deal public artworks. The murals in the Bronx by Ben Shahn are masterpieces, monumental in scale and extremely well-known.

Save the Berkeley Post encourages its supporters to make a tax-deductible donation to the National Post Office Collaborate to support the legal efforts to stop these sales.
Click here to make a donation to the National Post Office Collaborate
or
Mail a check to:
National Post Office Collaborate
P..O. Box 1234
Berkeley, CA 94701

The USPS notice of approval states that “there will be a marketing alternative to keep a right-sized retail presence in a portion of the existing Berkeley Post Office.”  It said that it plans to rent a retail location in downtown Berkeley, either in the existing lobby of the Main Post Office or elsewhere.  At present, the USPS owns the Main Post Office and pays no taxes on the property.  Becoming a tenant represents a false economy and will leave the USPS vulnerable to rent increases in a high-rent commercial area.

Berkeley city officials asked for a one year time-out to work with the USPS to find a solution that met the long-term financial needs of the Postal Service and maintained federal ownership.  The Postal Service wasn't interested.

As of 2003, the USPS real estate portfolio had an estimated worth of $110 billion.  The process of privatizing USPS real estate holdings may yield enormous commissions to CB Richard Ellis, the giant commercial realty firm that was awarded an exclusive contract for USPS property sales.  University of California Regent Richard Blum is the chairman of CB Richard Ellis and the husband of California Senator Dianne Feinstein.

CONTACT
Dave Welsh
510-847-8657
0 Comments

Halt the Heist!

4/27/2013

0 Comments

 

STOP THE SALE!

Picture
Postmark appeals by May 7, 2013.
Mail to:
Vice President, Facilities
Facilities Implementation – Pacific Area
1300 Evans Ave. Ste. 200
San Francisco CA 94188-0200

USPS requires that all appeals have a return address.

Come to a meeting 7 pm Thursday
May 2, 2013 at 2133 University Ave
Help plan our next steps.

On April 22, 2013, the USPS approved “the relocation of the Berkeley Main Post Office located at 2000 Allston Way, to a yet to be determined location.”  After operations are relocated, the USPS plans to sell our historic 99-year old Post Office.

Stop the ongoing sale
of our public commons

It’s not just the post office that’s being privatized.
Our schools, our public spaces, parks and services are all at risk.

Join Us! Help stop the ongoing
sale of our government!

In April alone, the USPS moved forward on selling historic post offices in La Jolla, CA,
NYC’s Chelsea neighborhood and the Bronx. Like Berkeley, all have New Deal art.

DOWNLOAD A COPY OF OUR CURRENT FLYER

0 Comments

USPS makes the wrong decision on Berkeley’s Post Office

4/22/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
We’ve been listening to people in Berkeley and what we hear is that the sale of our post office is not what our community wants. The Postal Service has not heard us yet: We will get their attention. To do so we must all speak and act together. 

Please tell us the best way to contact you quickly.
If email is not the best way to reach you, please go to our contact page and update your information. Let us know if you want text message updates or, better, if you want to be part of a notification phone tree.

Update your info on our contact page.
If you use Facebook, please "like" us on Facebook.
We were hopeful that the Postal Service would agree to work with the City of Berkeley to keep full postal services at 2000 Allston Way, maintain USPS ownership of the building, and realize long-term financial advantages for the Postal Service. 
Instead Monday afternoon the USPS issued a decision to proceed with the “relocation” and sale of our historic 99-year old Main Post Office. 
Perhaps as a concession to our community USPS offers this language:
  • There will be a marketing alternative to keep a right-sized retail presence in a portion of the existing Berkeley Post Office.
Anyone can request a review of the decision by sending a letter postmarked by May 7, 2013 to:

Vice President, Facilities
Facilities Implementation – Pacific Area
1300 Evans Ave. Ste. 200
San Francisco CA 94188-0200


The fifteen day time line for a review request is consistent with the time granted to other California communities. But shouldn’t we have been given thirty days to request a review?  That’s what a reading of the federal regulation and the time line recently used for review requests on the Bronx General Post Office indicate.

0 Comments

Postmaster General Donahoe "clarifies the facts"

4/18/2013

1 Comment

 
Picture
On April 10, Postmaster Patrick Donahoe responded to a letter from Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates.  Donahoe stated that in his view the economic crisis of the USPS is "not due to "a manufactured crisis," but instead, is a direct result of a fundamental change in the way Americans use the mail and the lack of flexibility in (the USPS) business model to adapt to these changes."

And "cut, cut & more cuts."

Also for anyone who doesn't think Postmaster General Donahoe and the USPS have been good custodians of the historic buildings and public art entrusted to them:

"The Postal Service is the first to acknowledge how important it is to preserve our historic buildings, which is why we are going through a lengthy and transparent process to assure their protection before they are sold. In the case of Berkeley we have been forthcoming on our proposal to sell the building. We held a public meeting in February where we listened and documented the concerns of hundreds of people."

Click to read the entire letter.

Fifteen Day Time Limits
Note well that Donahoe states that if the USPS decides to relocate the Downtown Berkeley Post Office citizens will have only fifteen days to appeal the decision to the USPS Vice-President Facilities: "Should the decision to relocate the retail operation and sell the building be approved, there will be a 15-day appeal period."  The fifteen day time limit is a violation of the Code of Federal Regulations 39CFR241.4(c)6 and is also not the time line used on the recent appeal process on the east coast for the Bronx General Post Office.

Overall USPS regulations for relocations are arbitrary and capricious.  The post office asserts their actions are exempt from environmental and historical preservation laws as well as two executive orders.  Finally after the USPS Facilities Vice-President reviews the decision, the USPS asserts that “there is no further right to administrative or judicial review."
Picture
1 Comment

Fighting Back in the Bronx

4/8/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr and more than thirty other elected officials wrote the USPS on April 1st to offer their strongest objections to the sale of the Bronx General Post Office.  

At a poorly-publicized daytime public hearing on Feb. 6, community members rallied against the proposed sale.

“We are appalled that, despite request for further community consultative processes at that hearing, the United States Postal Service has seen fit to issue a final sale determination,” read the letter, signed by Borough President Diaz, nine city council members, 16 state representatives and three Congressmen.

The Postal Service’s “refusal” to host evening hearings or accept community input electronically “when taken together, seem designed to minimize the public input during this important process,” the letter read.

“We cannot and will not accept that the Postal Service could come to such a deleterious determination affecting such an important part of the our Bronx heritage,” the letter concluded.

Read the entire letter from Bronx elected officials here.

The Bronx General Post Office lobby is filled with thirteen egg tempera on plaster frescos by artist Ben Shahn and his wife Bernarda Bryson Shahn.  Inspired by the Walt Whitman poem "I Hear America Singing," the Shahns' murals collectively entitled Resources of America, illustrate the nobility of the American worker. The panels depict men and women throughout the country engaged in labor, from rural cotton and wheat fields to urban textile factories and steel mills. Hydroelectric dams and industrial blast furnaces complete the powerful imagery which symbolized 1930s America.

Any person may make a written request for review by the US Postal Services Vice President for Facilities

Please send your letters of appeal through April 13 to:
USPS Vice President, Facilities
2 Congress Street, Room 8

USPS Facilities Implementation
Milford, MA 01757
0 Comments

Many Thanks!  Your letters, leafleting, rally presence, speaking and emails are making a difference.

4/2/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
photo credit: David Bacon
Berkeley’s Mayor and City Council are unanimous in opposing the sale of our beautiful, historic Post Office.  Their official letter to the USPS requests a one-year moratorium on selling the Post Office.  Berkeley’s city officials would like to work with the USPS to keep our Main Post Office in the public trust.  To date, we know of no decision having been made whether or not the building will be sold.

Add your voice to the growing movement to save Berkeley’s historic Main Post Office and to keep our postal service serving the public good.
Join Our Weekly Informational Leafleting Outside the Post Office on Saturdays.
Saturdays from 11:30 to 3:00 — please sign up for an hour or two.
Contact Sally Nelson sallynels7@gmail.com 
Put “Save P.O.” in the subject line.

0 Comments
    ABOUT

    The USPS wants to sell Berkeley's historic main post office. Citizens to Save the Berkeley Post Office is a grassroots group that has come together to block the sale of our heritage, stop service cut backs, and preserve living wage postal jobs.

    Our fight is not unique. Thousands of post office closures across the country mean the largest private auction of public history our nation has ever seen.

    Join the movement and spread the word. Our post office is not for sale.

    Picture
    Ten Easy Steps
    to Making a Music Video
    to Save Your Post Office!


    Picture

    Picture
    Jac McCormick in NYC
    Fighting for America's
    Post Offices!
    WATCH THE VIDEO!


    Picture

    Tell Staples the U.S. Mail is Not for Sale!
    Picture
    Sign the petition to stop the sale of historic post office like Berkeley's Downtown Main!

    Picture
    Getting rid of middle class jobs is the end. Privatization is the means. Fox News doesn't keep their agenda a secret. Watch the video.

    [10 on Tuesday] 10 Ways to Fight for Your Local Post Office from PreservationNation

    October 2, 2013 letter from Ralph Nader to Senator Dianne Feinstein

    baha_letter_to_usps.pdf
    File Size: 222 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File

    sample_letter.docx
    File Size: 15 kb
    File Type: docx
    Download File


    Picture

    Archives

    May 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    December 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

Proudly powered by Weebly