By Harold Reutter, March 29, 2017, in The Grand Island Independent.
While nobody knows what the U.S. Postal Service decision will be on moving post office retail services from downtown Grand Island to the postal sorting center on Old Potash Highway after the written comment period ends on Friday, the case of the Broadwater post office shows it’s possible to raise a successful protest.
What is still unknown is whether Broadwater has any useful examples for Grand Island, especially with time running out.
Broadwater is a village in Morrill County in the Panhandle.
James Kulacz, who is now a Broadwater Village Board member, had just moved to the community in 2010 as the Postal Service was announcing plans to close the Broadwater post office. A broad coalition of people fought to keep the post office open for the village, whose population was 128 residents at the time.
“One hundred twenty-four now,” Kulacz said, giving a current population update.
Although the village’s population is tiny, he said the Broadwater post office serves a large rural area. Postal officials gave residents a report on what it would cost to keep the post office open versus closing it and how much the savings would be.
“The figures in the report were wildly inaccurate,” Kulacz said.
The Broadwater post office is a leased property owned by a person who lives in Kansas. He said his wife was able to get a copy of the lease, which showed the post office figures were, in his words, “bogus.” The lease had a clause saying the Postal Service still had to pay the owner even if no services were being offered in the building.
Kulacz said the amount of mail that the Postal Service said was going through the Broadwater post office was “ridiculously low.” Broadwater has a firearms dealer who does a lot of business through registered mail. The dealer also is required to retain receipts for a minimum amount of time.
The dealer’s receipts showed that the Postal Service’s figures for mail volume were much too low, he said.
Kulacz wondered whether Grand Island might have any businesses that do a lot of business by registered mail. Statistics from those businesses might provide a good benchmark of how much mail actually goes through the Grand Island post office.
Contacting U.S. Sens. Mike Johanns and Ben Nelson, as well as U.S. Rep. Adrian Smith, was another factor in keeping the Broadwater post office open, he said. Residents also contacted their Nebraska state senator for help.
Kulacz said his wife contacted the postal unions to enlist their help in keeping the Broadwater post office open, while he contacted a retired postmaster for help.
He said he believes all these factors helped keep the Broadwater post office open, although its hours were reduced.
No decision lasts forever. Kulacz said the lease on the building for the Broadwater post office expires at the end of 2017.
But he added, “As of now, we haven’t had a notification that they’re not going to renew it. So we’re kind of hopeful that they’re not saying, ‘We’re not going to renew the lease.’”
Kulacz is not sure what, if any, of Broadwater’s experiences might benefit Grand Island’s efforts to keep the Postal Service’s retail services in downtown Grand Island. He suggested that perhaps the Union Pacific Railroad might be willing to lease the post office building for a very nominal fee to maintain goodwill with the city of Grand Island.
Indeed, many Grand Island residents have said the carriers and their trucks could go out to the postal sorting center on the west, but the primary desire is to keep services at the counter and post office boxes downtown.
However, some people have suggested that another downtown location needs to be found because of the current building’s problems with asbestos tile and structural problems caused by trains passing so near the building.
Keeping the Broadwater post office apparently was not a complete fluke. Kulacz said Bridgeport, a town of 1,545 west of Broadwater, rebuffed efforts to close that community’s post office. Lisco, a town of just 64 people east of Broadwater, also fought successfully to keep its post office open.