By Thia James

Sending mail could cost city $17K more

Dec 13, 2013 | 5:41 AM

The cost of doing business is expected to rise for the City of Prince Albert when Canada Post’s next postage increase kicks in.

After new postage price increases take effect, the city expects its overall postage costs to increase by $17,000. It sends out 140,000 pieces of mail each year at the applicable business postage rate, and the increase would translate out to about 12 cents per item.

The city sends water utility bills, municipal tax-related information, as well as direct mail notices to residents.

“My understanding is that there is a rate that is going to 75 cents for business mail that goes through postage machines. So, from 63 cents up to 75 cents,” said acting city manager and director of finance Joe Day.

On Wednesday, federal Crown corporation Canada Post announced that it would be phasing out door-to-door delivery in urban areas and would be raising the price of a single stamp to $1. It will also be cutting 6,000 to 8,000 jobs.

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In Prince Albert, the rising cost of postage won’t have immediate budget implications.

“It might be a little late in our process to try and adjust the budget this year, we may just see how the actual mailings that we do in 2014 affect what we have budgeted,” Day said.

“It might be an area that we’re probably going to watch through 2014 and see if there’s ways that we can achieve some cost savings through some different ways of getting the message out, whether that be electronically, or whether that be through some other methods.”

The city had been looking into e-billing already. Day said the city had been doing research from the information technology side to see what it is currently capable of doing and when it would need to collect email addresses from customers.

“But I think with the recent news, I think we’ll have to put a little more effort into it and see if there’s further things that we can do at maybe an accelerated pace.”

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames