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N. Charleston: Postal designations to reflect the city
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
The city of North Charleston boasts much of the state’s burgeoning automotive cluster, is home to its share of desirable neighborhoods and has a significant toehold in one of the state’s best school districts.
But the general public likely doesn’t know all that, thanks to the power and authority of the U.S. Postal Service, which for at least the past five years had been unresponsive to city officials’ pleas to amend zip codes in the municipality and burnish the city’s image in the process.
The problem comes down to a matter of jurisdictional boundaries. While the state of South Carolina bestows many powers on cities and towns, including the authority to tax, impose aesthetic and zoning rules on new construction and enforce occupancy codes, it doesn’t allow a city to mandate its own identity.
That, especially when it comes to outsiders such as economic development prospects and families looking to relocate to the area, is largely determined by the postal service and its nearly iron-clad control of mailing addresses and zip codes.
That’s why the Wescott Plantation development, which is in the high-achieving Dorchester II school district, is considered to be in Summerville, although its geographic location and its municipal services are overseen by North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey.
The same is true of the new DaimlerChrysler plant and the rest of the corporate tenants of the Palmetto Commerce Park, which the postal service says is in Ladson, but which lies within the confines of North Charleston.
“It’s a frustrating circumstance,” said John Cawley, North Charleston’s economic development director. “Even our municipal golf course is considered to be somewhere else.”
In spite of being intertwined with physical locations, zip codes are not and never were created to formally adhere to political subdivisions such as cities, towns and unincorporated areas.
The Lowcountry’s zip codes are no exception. The zip code—zip being an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan—is a system employed by the postal service to move mail more efficiently and quickly to its destination because it allows for more automation of the mail handling process.
Forty years ago, when the zones were laid out, they followed natural boundaries that didn’t change over time. Occasionally they followed utility right of ways.
At that time, North Charleston was just seven square miles, with Park Circle at its heart. Even as recently as 1972, the city boasted only 21,000 residents, Cawley said.
When the codes came into existence, Charleston, North Charleston and the now defunct Charleston Heights designation all operated out of the same postal facility.
But things have changed dramatically in the ensuing years. North Charleston is now a burgeoning metropolis, covering a total of 76 square miles, and is home to 86,000 residents.
What were once distant postal boundaries now slice the town into distinct portions, including one portion that couples its neighborhoods with Hanahan, another that ties Wescott and considerably more to Summerville and a third that lands a parcel of developable industrial sites in Ladson.
“It’s not anybody’s fault; it’s just the way the codes were created,” said Ray Anderson, special assistant to Summey. “Now we’re just trying to work things out amicably, the way they should be.”
The city first began talking to the postal service about the issue roughly three years ago, and while the image of the municipality was one factor, there were other, more tangible reasons for concern, Anderson said.
Where people live and do business determines where they should file property and business taxes, apply for permits and even where their 911 responses originate.
Unfortunately, Anderson said, people are confused about what municipality they should turn to. The confusion has cost North Charleston money over the years because municipal employees need to dedicate time and resources to keeping on top of the situation.
The city’s initial outreach to then-postmaster David Wild was rebuffed, Cawley said.
Only an act of Congress can change a postal zip code boundary, and even minor tweaking or revamping of a code must undergo an extensive internal review process at the postal service that could take years to complete.
Even through that process, the hurdles to completion can be incredible. For instance, Cawley maintained that postal official told him 100% of Wescott residents would have to endorse being moved into North Charleston’s zip code.
“Now, honestly, how often in history has 100 percent of a population agreed on anything,” he said.
Cawley then suggested that the zip codes not be changed, but that people be allowed to use “North Charleston” in place of “Summerville” or “Ladson” in their addresses if they so desired.
“The postal master told us that would create a whole other set of problems that would render that mail undeliverable,” Cawley said.
The new postmaster, Tim Shaw, initially seemed somewhat more receptive to the city’s concerns and there was a brief period when Cawley and Anderson believed a solution was finally at hand.
“We were told in a meeting last year that the matter really just boiled down to a software issues that could be dealt with,” Cawley said. “Then came a second call in which it was suggested that they were mistaken, so we’re back where we started.”
Shaw, who has been through just one zip code change in his 25-year career with the postal service, said he would like to have helped North Charleston achieve its goal, but the more he tried to do, the more roadblocks he encountered.
The “software issue” Cawley referred to was a case in point, he said.
“The processing of mail is done through an automated system that’s designed to allow for the delivery of mail in the most economical way. Advances in that system have allowed us to associate one zip code, for instance Daniel Island’s 29496, with more than one community. In that particular case, with Wando, Cainhoy and Charleston,” Shaw said.
“One thing you can’t do, however, is merge two geographical areas with the same zip code that have identical addresses; that would create a conflict in delivery.”
For instance, he said if there was a 25 Smith St. in North Charleston and one in the Wescott development, which was deemed to have a Summerville address, the merger of the addresses would create two 25 Smiths in North Charleston – and a logistic nightmare.
“We came upon this scenario several times as we looked at street addresses in the two zip codes,” Shaw said. “The other issue we keep coming up against is growth, which makes the situation even more convoluted. In some cases, we have developers who want to be identified with one area despite being in another.”
The most recent Postal Service Reauthorization Act, signed into law in January, actually resolves another local community’s concerns about its zip code, requiring the postal service to give Hanahan its own code, 29410, by July 1.
“They’re going to get what they wanted, but here’s the catch: Everyone in the new zip code has to move, at least in a bureaucratic sense. They have to change their driver’s license, their tax records, all their mail. Even when you get what you want, the transition is not as easy as it sounds,” Shaw said. “It’s kind of like a business going through a retooling process.”
Since its last discussion with Shaw, North Charleston has written to U.S. Rep. Henry Brown, R-S.C., asking him to look at the matter to help find a resolution.
“All we want is for our folks to know where they live and work and do business,” Cawley said. “It’s an issue that needs to continue to be looked at.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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