TAMPA FL — Mail from St. Petersburg that is currently processed at the Postal Service’s Tampa Processing & Distribution Center (P&DC) is postmarked “Tampa FL 335 Saint Petersburg FL.”

When all mail processing operations from the St. Petersburg P&DC move to the Tampa P&DC, the postmark will remain “Tampa FL 335 Saint Petersburg FL.”

On February 23 the Postal Service announced that the St. Petersburg P&DC mail processing operations would move to Tampa as part of its reduction of the size of the national mail processing network and efforts to eliminate a costly underutilized infrastructure.

The Postal Service has experienced a 25 percent decline in First-Class Mail volume since 2006, and receives no tax dollars for its operations, relying instead on the sale of postage, and postal products and services.

The move of the St. Petersburg P&DC mail processing operations to Tampa will take several months and will not occur before the end of May 2012.

The retail unit (where customers purchase stamps, mail packages and conduct other Postal Service transactions) located at the St. Petersburg P&DC will remain open.

The Business Mail Entry Unit (BMEU) located at the St. Petersburg P&DC will remain open.

A list of mail processing studies and their status is available at usps.com/ourfuturenetwork. Specific information about individual studies, including public meeting summaries and summary briefs, is posted on the website, usps.com/areamailprocessing, as it becomes available.

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A list of processing facilities studied, FAQs, mail processing b-roll, and additional information can be found at usps.com/ourfuturenetwork.

A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 151 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. With nearly 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $65 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 35th in the 2011 Fortune 500. In 2011, the U.S. Postal Service was ranked number one in overall service performance, out of the top 20 wealthiest nations in the world, Oxford Strategic Consulting. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency for six years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.