Editor: Litchfield Park 85340 — I ZIP code, therefore I am

As I began covering Litchfield Park late last year, one issue kept popping up that people, especially those at city hall, thought I should do a story on.

It had to do with ZIP codes.

It may only be few numbers, but a ZIP code can be a reflection of who you are as a city. But in the case of Litchfield Park 85340, maybe it is not the best reflection.

ZIP codes are a really good way for marketers and researchers to learn about you and your city. For example, they are used in advertising and housing statistics. It may be a good measurement for bigger cities like Phoenix, where dozens and dozens of ZIP codes make up the whole.

But Litchfield Park in square-footage only takes up a small portion of the 85340 ZIP code — like, one-tenth. And the city has a population of about 6,000, around 25 percent of the roughly 26,000 people living within the ZIP code’s boundaries.

City officials say this has been problematic.

City Manager Bill Stephens said it could put the city in a misleading light, affecting things like property values or city ratings.

“When someone commits a crime, for example, it puts a negative spin on Litchfield Park when the person or suspect resides outside of the city limits,” he said.

An additional quirk to the 85340 ZIP code: Many people think they live in Litchfield Park just because their ZIP code or address is associated with the city, but they actually physically reside in unincorporated Maricopa County.

City officials said these county citizens call the city and make demands and complaints, thinking Litchfield Park is supposed to provide them services ­— when it is actually the county they should be calling.

A city employee recently bought a home outside the city limits but within the 85340 ZIP code, and his real estate representative told him he would be a Litchfield Park resident and would have free access to the Litchfield Park Recreation Center and other amenities, according to Mr. Stephens. Not true of course, but when a real estate agent does this, it is the city who usually ends up telling the new homeowner the truth. And the new county resident doesn’t always react kindly to the news.

This has been an ongoing issue for the city for a number of years, and the city actually tried to get is own dedicated ZIP code nearly 10 years ago, to no avail.

The Litchfield Park City Council approved an ordinance requesting the U.S. Postal Service change the 85340 ZIP code to correspond to the area within the actual city limits. Essentially the post office responded that the request was not feasible, which would likely be the case if the city made a similar request today.

I contacted U.S. Post Office spokesman Rod Spurgeon who told me a ZIP code generally identifies the individual post office or metropolitan area delivery station associated with an address.

He said all post offices are assigned at least one unique 5-digit code. For Litchfield Park, this happens to be the post office at 591 E. Plaza Circle.

But Mr. Spurgeon said ZIP codes are generally not modified unless there is a USPS operational need for the change.

This is unfortunate, but as the news editor covering this city, I will do my best to make locations clear in my reporting.

I’m sorry if that is a lame consolation prize.

That said, here is a small but informative gift — a brief history of the  ZIP code as provided to me by the U.S. Postal Service.

ZIP code history

ZIP codes were established in 1963 to assist with efficient mail sortation and delivery.

During World War II, thousands of experienced postal employees left to serve with the military. To offset the loss, in May 1943 the Post Office Department began a zoning address system in 124 of the largest cities. Under this system, delivery units or zones were identified by one or two numbers between the city and state — for example, Birmingham 7, Alabama — so that mail could be separated by employees who did not have detailed scheme knowledge.

Twenty years later, the department implemented an even farther reaching plan, the Zoning Improvement Plan Code, or ZIP code.

The social correspondence of the 19th century had given way, gradually then explosively, to business mail. By 1963, 80 percent of all mail in the United States was business mail. The development of the computer brought centralization of accounts and sent a growing mass of utility bills and payments, bank deposits and receipts, advertising, magazines, credit card transactions, mortgage bills and payments, and Social Security checks through the mail. Yet while mail volume grew and while the Post Office Department had been at the forefront of advances in transportation, the methods and much of the equipment used to sort mail in thousands of post offices remained the same as in Benjamin Franklin’s day. A better way to sort mail was needed.

In June 1962, after a study of mechanization, the presidentially appointed Advisory Board of the Post Office Department made several recommendations. One was the development of a coding system, an idea the department had considered for a decade or more. A number of coding programs were examined and discarded before the department selected a system. Postmaster General J. Edward Day announced the ZIP Code would launch July 1, 1963.

Preparing for the new system involved a realignment of the mail system. The Post Office Department had previously recognized that new avenues of transportation would open and had begun to establish focal points for air, highway and rail transportation. Called the Metro System, these transportation centers were set up around 85 of the country’s larger cities to deflect mail from congested city streets. The metro concept was expanded and eventually became the core of 552 sectional centers, each serving between 40 and 150 surrounding post offices.

Once these sectional centers were delineated, the next step in establishing the ZIP code was to assign codes to the centers and the postal addresses they served. The existence of postal zones in the larger cities, set in motion in 1943, helped to some extent, but in cases where the old zones failed to fit within the delivery areas, new numbers had to be assigned.

By July 1963, a five-digit code had been assigned to every address throughout the country. The first digit designated a broad geographical area of the United States, ranging from zero for the northeast to nine for the far west. This number was followed by two digits that more closely pinpointed population concentrations and those sectional centers accessible to common transportation networks. The final two digits designated small post offices or postal zones in larger zoned cities.

The ZIP code began as scheduled. At first, use of the new code was not mandatory for anyone, but in 1967, the department required mailers of second- and third-class bulk mail to presort by ZIP Code.

The public and business mailers adapted well to its use.

Editor's note: Mr. Haldiman is the News Editor for the Litchfield Park Independent.