Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
This work session focused on a staff presentation regarding a zip code boundary review request to the USPS, followed by council discussion on the issue and a separate update regarding Atlanta water letters received by residents. No formal votes or actions were taken.
The time for convening has arrived. I'd like to start this evening's series of meetings with our work session. First item is the zip code project update. Ms. Carter Long. Ms. Long Speaker 2. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Tonight, before you have some information regarding a zip code boundary review, there's no action needed tonight, but we are going to review a little bit of the background of the issue, impacts of our current zip codes as well as objectives for the current review request, as well as timeline and next steps. So as you know, Sandy Springs has more than 63,000 addresses within city limits. The city has eight zip codes within our municipal boundaries. Those are 30350, 30328, 30342, 30339, 30338, 30327, 30319, and finally 30092. The zip codes refer to the zone improvement plan, which the USPS put in place in 1963. And so those zip codes refer to the region where the post office facility services those addresses. So when the city was formed in 2005, we inherited those zip codes that have been in place for that time. So again, we have eight total in our municipal boundaries. And these all have a recommended city name for addresses within each of those zip codes, which is currently the city of Atlanta. In 2010, the city made a request for USPS to change the default last line for all zip codes crossing municipal boundaries between Atlanta and the city of Sandy Springs to be Sandy Springs with all of those zip codes in our city boundaries. At the time, the USPS required businesses to approve this request, so we had to have 80% of the businesses in the city agree to this change, and more than half of the residents. Some of you may remember that voting process took place in 2012, but it did not move forward due to some opposition. In 2016, USPS instituted management instruction in guiding USPS to really work with USBS policies to make sure that they can, when able, modify and accommodate those requests for zip code boundaries to change within the last line of USPS addresses. And I just want to be clear that we are not requesting that there are any zip codes within the city that are changed. We are rather asking USPS to USPS to align the zip codes with the preferred last line for Sandy Springs. So some of those current impacts can be the potential delays within emergency response for police and fire, for service delivery, as well as our community programs like our paramedicine program. Tax attribution errors is another one, as you know Atlanta's tax rate is higher than the City of Sandy Springs. And there are many companies that use software that use to calculate the tax revenue on purchases, and that is based on zip codes. So sometimes it happens when there are wrong city taxes attributed to online purchases. Um are expensive to install or to update, and so there have been even large companies that have been found to have incorrect charged Atlanta sales tax to Sandy Springs residents. Public confusion about jurisdiction is another impact of the current zip code and preferred last line. These days people get around using Google Maps and Waze and mapping software such as those scrape data from RGIS as well as ESRI and other mapping sources, and ESRI will only use the USPS city, which is currently Atlanta. That can cause confusion for people when they're looking to go to somewhere in Sandy Springs, but an Atlanta address pops up. So this undermines our efforts for city brand awareness and civic pride. Additionally, our economic development department spends a great deal of time, money, and resources to be able to retain and bring new businesses to Sandy Springs. And when they are doing that under the Select Sandy Springs brand, although site selection lists Atlanta as the address, it can cause confusion as you might see. I do want to mention mention that there is no impact to USPS or our residents or businesses. So people will not need to update their mailing information or stationary. If somebody still lists the Atlanta address that will be delivered correctly and there will be no issues or delays in the USPS process. Objectives of the zip code boundary review. So we want to make sure that people are getting those breaks. And we also want to make sure that the city receives proper proper recognition and were applicable revenue associated with commerce in the city. In terms of what this process looks like, the mayor has requested this formal review as of this month. And the district manager is to really to review all the issues, potential costs and solutions, quantify any sort of operational impacts and feasibility of our request, and then get back to us within 60 days of with their final determination. In this process, we're also reaching out to elected officials at the state level to get some support behind our efforts, which we've seen some success with the city of Johns Creek. And so if USPS considers granting this request, they will arrange a meeting with us after that 60-day process to discuss their accommodation to that request.