MANKATO — The troubled U.S. Postal Service’s six-month moratorium on closing facilities won’t necessarily mean a six-month reprieve for Mankato’s mail processing center and North Mankato’s post office.

The Postal Service, which is forecast to lose a record $14.1 billion next year, agreed to delay plans to close or downsize scores of mail processing centers like the one off of Third Avenue in Mankato. Nearly 4,000 post offices, including North Mankato’s, are also facing potential closure as the Postal Service looks to slash costs.

The moratorium means none will be shuttered before May 15, but that doesn’t stop the agency from continuing preparations for closings, said Peter Nowacki, a Postal Service spokesman.

“The process continues at this point,” Nowacki said.

A final decision on both of the Mankato-area facilities was expected soon.

Decisions on processing centers around the country that had previously had portions of their operations eliminated typically came two to four months after a public hearing was held. Logistical issues then require another one to seven months, in most cases, before operations are discontinued.

The public hearing on the Mankato facility was held on August 24, meaning a determination was likely looming when the moratorium was announced on Dec. 15 after 22 Senate Democrats — including Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken — requested it a week earlier. At a separate town meeting on the closing of the post office on Belgrade Avenue, Postal Service officials said they expected a decision around the first of the year.

In the case of post offices, a 60-day lag between the decision and the actual closing is required — so North Mankato wasn’t going to see its post office closed until around March 1 at the earliest. Nowacki said decisions on both facilities could be made and announced during the moratorium, with the actual shuttering happening in the second half of May.

“It’s possible we could announce on March 15 that we’d close something on May 15,” he said.

At both public hearings, despite community opposition, Postal Service officials presented strong cases for shutting down the North Mankato post office and ending outgoing mail processing at the processing center on Mankato’s north side.

Nearly $1 million would be saved by downsizing the processing center and 18 local jobs could be eliminated, but customer service would be largely unaffected, according to the Postal Service study presented at the meeting. Closing the Belgrade Avenue post office would save $91,000.

Similar savings at 250 other processing centers and nearly 3,700 post offices nationwide would add up to as much as $6.5 billion a year. Approximately 100,000 jobs would be eliminated.

Klobuchar and Franken said they sought the moratorium because of the impending job losses and the negative impact on rural communities when post offices are closed.

The Postal Service doesn’t receive tax dollars, but Congress directly controls important aspects of the agency’s operations.

For instance, a law passed in 2006 — when the Postal Service was highly profitable — forced the organization to pre-fund 75 years worth of retiree health care benefits within 10 years. During the moratorium, members of Congress will be seeking to pass legislation easing that mandate, which is substantially more onerous than what is required of other employers.

Legislation could also be passed allowing the Postal Service to raise postage prices and reduce delivery to five days a week.

Those actions wouldn’t necessarily solve the agency’s long-term financial problems or completely eliminate the need to shutter facilities. Americans are simply not using the Postal Service the way they once did. First-class mail volume nationwide has dropped from 208 billion pieces in 2000 to 171 billion last year, largely because of the rise of e-mail and electronic bill-paying.

“This is a crisis,” a Postal Service official told North Mankato residents at the October town meeting. “We’re at a point where we need to lean down and pick up every dime on the pavement.”