Monday was Jason Miles’ first official day as officer in charge at the Palisades Post Office. He replaced Rochelle Willis, who served in the position for one week following Sheryl Gardiner’s departure on December 23. Miles, a Redondo Beach native, comes to the Palisades station with almost 10 years of experience with the postal service. At age 32, he’s one of the youngest employees to hold a management position and has worked in a variety of communities, including the Bel Air/Brentwood area, which had service concerns similar to the Palisades. He worked last week with Willis at the Palisades Post Office and immediately recognized internal problems’namely, the reporting times of employees (arriving at work) and a delay in mail getting from the clerk unit to the carrier unit. “Right away I noticed that the carriers needed support and direction. They were out until 8:30/9 p.m. at night,” he said. “Not only is it poor service but it can lead to higher injuries.” Miles also noticed delayed mail volume, evidenced by the stacks of mail piled in the building last week. Since then, he said he has talked to his approximately 39 carriers about their concerns and needs, helped them set goals, and assigned them times to report to the office. Their main concern was mail flow, meaning that they felt they weren’t receiving their mail on time from the clerks at the La Cruz station who separate the mail into routes. “The mail wasn’t getting processed timely,” said Miles, who fixed this “by coming in and managing it myself.” Miles said he arrives at 5 a.m. and manages his 5-6 clerks until about 7:30 a.m., then supports the carriers as they arrive and begin sorting their mail by sequence of their delivery route. He has one supervisor working with him in the morning (a second supervisor arrives in the afternoon). “The majority of the mail gets here early, before the carriers arrive,” he said. The last truck that brings mail in the morning is scheduled to arrive at 8:30 a.m. from downtown. He usually has between 27 and 32 carriers per day working to deliver the 28 routes in the Palisades. “Even if we’re down two or three, it’s not a problem,” said Miles, who has not yet hired any new carriers. “I talk to them every day and set expectations with them. They want to be off the street by 5 p.m. as much as I want them to,” he said, adding that this group of employees is “one of the best groups I’ve ever worked with.” As of Wednesday morning, not one of his carriers had been on the street delivering mail after 5 p.m. this week. “I don’t want to delay time-sensitive mail,” said Miles, who was given three-days’ notice of his assignment at the Palisades Post Office. Prior to assuming his position, he met with former officer in charge Sheryl Gardiner as well as senior management to discuss the problems here but said they didn’t have to inform him about the main concerns. “It was in the news. They said, ‘Go up there and improve service.'” Miles started by instructing the carriers to deliver all the mail that was piled up in the office when he arrived. “I pushed every piece of mail out of here,” he said, explaining that he wanted “a clean slate.” This week, he’s focused on getting every piece of mail that comes in each day delivered the same day. While he acknowledged that late trucks coming from the Los Angeles Processing and Distribution Center would impact mail delivery in the Palisades, he doesn’t foresee this happening and, if it does, he plans to call the district office to remedy the situation. Miles said the departure times for trucks leaving downtown for the Palisades has been adjusted so that the trucks arrive here on time. The closure of the Marina Processing and Distribution Center last July “does not contribute to the decline-in-service issue that Pacific Palisades has experienced.” Neither are the machines that automatically sort the mail at the L.A. center an issue, he said. “The machines are very reliable, very effective.” Plus, “there are people running them.” He noted that First Class mail, including credit card bills, is “the type of mail that is not delayed.” Rather, “it’s business or third-class mail that’s delayed.” In his experience with the postal service, he’s only seen a “handful” of cases of delayed First Class mail. The late delivery and missorted mail problems that Palisades residents are experiencing is a result of internal, local issues, Miles said. “It all comes down to getting [the carriers] out of here [on time].” He admitted he was a little surprised that more residents haven’t already contacted him with their concerns. “I really expected an influx,” he said, adding that he’s only heard from “maybe a dozen” who are mainly concerned with late delivery. Miles encouraged residents to come talk to him “whether they were satisfied or not with the prior management.” He said that while he has to attend to his daily duties, he has an “open-door policy” and “will get to every single one of them” The best time to reach Miles is between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., at 454-3475.
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