Philly mail operations inefficent and too costly, Butkovitz says

Philadelphia’s controller has found problems in the city mailroom that he said are costing money as well as time.

Improper sorting of mail being sent out by the city is costing more than $1.5 million a year in overcharges, said City Controller Alan Butkovitz.

“We want to assure that they are using the sorting machines,  they can save eight and a half cents per letter by putting mail through the machines,” he said. That methods costs 39.1 cents per piece of mail, rather than 48 cents.

The city’s revenue department received the information on the unnecessary expenditure about a year ago, Butkovitz said, but the Nutter administration did nothing about it.

There seems to be more interest in savings now, he said.

“We are really encouraged that the new revenue commissioner and the Kenney administration have taken the findings of this report to heart and have immediately initiated a number of corrective measures,” he said.

Butkovitz is looking to cut down on mailroom overtime as well.