Please Mr. Postman

 

Local zip code map. Red line indicates Goochland County line.

During citizen comment at a recent meeting of the Goochland Board of Supervisors, a Hadensville resident said that, even though she lives in Goochland, she has a Louisa mailing address, which causes a great deal of confusion. She asked the supervisors to intervene with the US Postal Service to remedy the situation.

She is not alone.

People who live in the area designated as the Centerville Village, for instance, have Manakin Sabot, Rockville, and even Richmond addresses. New development along Broad Street Road, homes in Bellview Gardens, and the River Road corridor have Richmond zip codes, some even have Henrcio, Virginia addresses, even though they are clearly in Goochland.  Parkside Village, a residential enclave in the northeast corner of Goochland, has a Glen Allen zip code. Parts of western Goochland have a Columbia zip code, which takes in parts of Fluvanna and Cumberland counties. Avery Point, the upscale senior living community near the Henrico line, bills its location as “Short Pump” and, states on its website that it is in Henrico County. A current seven figure listing for a new home in the River Road corridor, well inside the Goochland border, has a Henrico address. This is significant because Goochland is in a different congressional district and school division than Henrico.

Zip (zone improvement) codes were established in 1963 to speed mail sorting methods and improve service through automation. According to the website of the Inspector General of the Postal Service, zip codes also became a support structure for a wide range of enterprises.  Supposedly, the four digit zip code extension allegedly identifies an address down to a city block, which should also work in a rural area, but may not.

You can learn all sorts of things about where you live by entering your zip code into a search engine. For instance, if you enter the zip code for 23093, which includes part of Goochland County’s Hadensville area, you get https://www.unitedstateszipcodes.org/23093/. This does not mention anything about Goochland, even though its map clearly shows that is includes part of Goochland.

The United States Postal Service website includes a procedure for changing zip code addresses. “Within this process, our policy is to offer reasonable administrative or operational accommodation that can correct or alleviate the municipal identity concerns. One accommodation that may be made after evaluating postal operational concerns is to allow the alternate use of more than one city name in the last line of an address, while retaining the use of the ZIP Code of the Post Office providing delivery. If USPS considers changing ZIP code boundaries based upon customer request, and a potential accommodation is identified and agreed upon, customer support is confirmed via a survey. To help ensure stability in the ZIP Code network, facility planning, and postal operations, and because it is a very costly process, once a request to adjust a ZIP Code boundary has been accommodated, additional requests to amend that boundary will not be considered more frequently than once every 10 years. A municipality or community group requesting a ZIP Code boundary adjustment should submit its request in writing to the district manager responsible for the affected territory. The district manager will review the impacts and operational feasibility of the request. Should the request be denied, the process allows for an appeal to the manager of delivery at Postal Service Headquarters. Private individuals, companies or organizations do not have standing on their own to request a ZIP Code boundary review.”

Recently, the mail service in the Richmond region was ranked worst in the nation for on time mail delivery due to dysfunction, believed to be the result of an effort to streamline operations at a mail processing facility in Sandston.

A 2012 blog post on the Goochland Historical Society website, goochlandhistory.org, said that in 1889, there were 28 post offices in the county including Dover Mines and Bula, places that have slipped into the mists of history. Due to consolidation, there are now only a few post offices in the county. If social media posts are any indication, many Goochlanders experience difficulties with their mail. A solution to this may be elusive.