Stamps up to 39 cents

with New Year rate hike

BY STEPHEN MALONEY

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PONTCHARTRAIN NEWSPAPERS

COVINGTON - Today you will need to put your extra 2 cents down toward buying postage stamps.

The price of a stamp rose from $.37 to $.39 on Sunday.

"It's a nominal increase in stamp price," said Covington Postmaster Jay Daigre.

This increase comes at a time when post offices in Louisiana are still struggling to return to their pre-Katrina level of service.

"In some cases mail will reach Baton Rouge in two days," Daigre said, "Other times it will take over a week. It's not totally consistent."

The major reason behind the delays is the shortage of manpower at processing plants. The main plant in New Orleans sustained severe damage, knocking it out of commission. Daigre said plans call for the plant to reopen in April, but it won't be the same.

"I don't think it will ever be like it was before," Daigre said. "The coordination of transportation schedules, everything logistical, was in place in New Orleans. That's not here yet."

With the New Orleans plant down, the post office has to rely on plants in St. Rose and Port Allen. The new demand is straining those plants, which are facing a manpower shortage and a rise in the amount of packages being mailed.

"Parcel delivery was higher for the holiday season, and it has not dropped off yet," Daigre said. "I don't know if that means there are still more parcels being mailed or if there was a backlog."

Priority mail was delivered in two to three days before Hurricane Katrina, but it could take five to seven days now because of all the delays in the system, Daigre said.

Another major factor that has been bogging down the post office's computers is the amount of change of address forms since Katrina hit.

"We were processing about 400,000 before, and now we're seeing something like 1.6 million change of address forms," Daigre said.

Most of those forms were temporary, meaning that a displaced person filled out a form in order to receive mail wherever they found shelter after the storm, and then they had to fill out a second change of address form when they either changed locations or were able to return to their homes.

"Many of these forms had to be sent to Houston for processing since our computers were so overloaded," Daigre said.

These delays are certainly inconvenient in the short term, but Daigre thinks the situation will improve when the manpower shortage is addressed.

"When the plants get their staffing problems figured out, we'll see fewer delays," Daigre said.