The Sidewalks of White Plains

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Friday Night at Magnotta's with "Red" Blaine

White Plains postal workers advised of new rate hike coming in midsummer.

37 Cents for First Class coming just 10 months after 1 cent rise.

Source: Consolidated mail routes slow White Plains delivery permanently.

Source predicts Board of Governors will end Saturday delivery this year and raise Third Class Bulk Rates.

Newly installed tray sort system installed at cost of $27 Million does not work.

New carrier contract upgrades wages for more work, resulting in mail at 5 PM and 6 PM.

By Rhonda "Red" Blaine, the sassy, nosy, leggy cynical redheaded reporter.

 


CityLine: March 31 & April 4, 2001 -- Magnotta's Restaurant

If there's a Cafe' Americaine in White Plains, it's Magnotta's Restaurant. It's a place where you can find out what's really going on and what really happened and the story behind the stories. It's where my lecherous editor picked up the lowdown on what really happened in the Highlands teen assault incident. Another place is the Splendid Coffee Shop where secrets are spilled over sandwiches and soup.

Believe me, a cynical nosy gal reporter needs those kind of places. Especially since Bailey, my Editor, always wants me to be digging out things for him. I mean he never gets this stuff himself, he always leaves me to do the spade work in my own unique style.

Your cynical, nosy redheaded reporter loves easing into Angelo Magnotta's on Friday nights for a beer putting an ice-cold cap on a week of covering City Hall scenarios, Democratic plots, developer deals, secret meetings, open space uprisings, dramatic affairs, and political comebacks, and quid pro quos.

You just have to wash it down with a slice of Danny's pizza with sausage, peppers, mushrooms, and onions.

Friday, we ran into an old pal: the ever affable Mr. Chianti.

We hadn't seen Mr. Chianti, our post office pal for a number of months. (Magnotta's has its regulars.) Used to run into him all the time, and we missed him, especially since he was dead right on his post office predictions last year at this time.

Seems he told me last year just right about now that mail delivery in White Plains was going to get worse. He said that we could expect to experience permanent slowdowns in mail delivery in White Plains.

Well, I had just been thinking about Mr. Chianti that very Friday, and how he had been absolutely right.

The mail delivery in my part of town has been very late, very slow, sometimes taking 2 to 3 days to get across town. Just ask City Hall. Meeting notices are being mailed out and are arriving on the day of the meeting, and documents mailed to interested parties are arriving with hardly enough time for residents to digest them.

At this reporter's posh SRO, I get my mail at 4 to 5 PM. Yesterday was an exception, a replacement carrier got here at 2 PM.

Anyway, there I was on Friday night and there was Mr. Chianti heading out as I was heading in. We shook hands, and I asked him what was new.

Well, mailfans, he gave the redhead an earful.

According to Mr. Chianti, a manager in the White Plains postal system, internal memos he's read, issued from the United States Postal Service in Washington to the White Plains post offices have revealed big postal changes in the very near future which will change mail as we know it.

1.) Mr. C says that first class postage will be raised to 37 cents in midsummer, up 3 cents from the 1 cent raise enacted in September 2000. He also reports Third Class Bulk Rate will be increased. The reason: the post office is projecting losses of from $2 to $4 billion a year.

2.) His long range prediction: The U.S. Postal Service will be "privatized" within three years and before the 2004 elections.

3.) He also reports that by mid-summer the Postal Service will move to eliminate Saturday mail delivery. (This plan was confirmed in a radio report on WINS Wedesday morning.)

Over my Michelob Lite, I asked him how he had been so right about his prediction of White Plains mail deterioriation in performance.

Mr. C. says it all started with the latest contract with the mail carriers.

Though the carriers got a raise in pay to $11,600, they agreed to change work rules. Now, Mr. C. says more routes are being given to any one mail carrier, so you now have a mail carrier having to execute as many as four routes in a single day. This has contributed to the stretching out of mail times.

On top of the delivery squeeze, Mr. C. says the $27 million overhead "sort tray" installation installed in the local postal offices is not working, and in fact, is not being used. The reason, the man with the big carafe says, is because the tray system sorts the mail too slowly, and cannot handle the volume of mail. It overflows, moves the mail on conveyors much too cumbersomely.

As a result, distribution of mail in White Plains has been slowed by sorting problems as well as consolidation of mail routes. Mr. Chianti says the mail is being sorted by hand the old-fashioned way.

Concluding this insider's view, Mr. Chianti tells me the post office is placing a moratorium on new post office construction nationally, in anticipation of the privitization seen down the road.

WPCNR is attempting to verify to what extent Mr. Chianti's reports are true. But, he has a good track record.


 

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