There’s a saying: “You can’t fight city hall.”                                                                                                                                                                                         But you can. City hall is easy to fight.  Bunch of lightweights, for sure.
But the U.S. Postal Service, now there’s a formidable entity.
A few years ago, you could fight the Post Office. They were federal employees then and if you got your knickers in a twist, you could call your local U.S. representative or senator and they would make a call and pressure would be brought to bear, and the situation would be settled.
Then the Post Office got privatized, making it basically a federally protected monopoly that answered to absolutely no one. Uh, oh. If you were dissatisfied with something at the post office, well, pretty much too bad for you.
For years, communities have been at odds with the Post Office over its capricious building programs, moving established facilities and building new ones despite outcries from the affected communities.
All this is a to preamble to show just how amazing it was that the residents of Bryant were able to get postal officials to agree to make $650,000 in improvements to the Bryant facility.
Admittedly, it’s not what they asked for. The good citizens of Bryant need — and deserve — a new, first-rate postal facility with plenty of parking and safe entry and exit from the parking lot.
And while it’s not what they asked for,  it’s something, and something is quite a bit when you are dealing with a federally protected monopoly.
Instead of a new facility, the current facility will be expanded and traffic will be rerouted.
“We heard you,” Jeffery Taylor, district manager for the U.S. Postal Service of Arkansas, told civic leaders last week. “The message was loud and clear. It was effectively sent, and it was received.”
Wow! Way to go, Bryant! Score!
Major credit is due to the community committee, headed by the dynamic Debbie Broadway, that has maintained pressure on the postal service.
Broadway said it was the consolidated effort of the community that made things happen. “When we all talk in the same voice, we’re heard,” she said.
Bryant now has shown that it indeed has a voice, and knows how to use it.

Today’s editorial was written by Robert Shearon, news editor of the Courier, on behalf of the newspaper’s editorial board.
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