Hundreds of Cedar Park residents who have Leander mailing addresses are now able to start using a new Cedar Park address line on their mail.

The United States Postal Service assigned Leander mailing addresses with a 78641 ZIP code to 640 properties that fall within Cedar Park’s city limits or extraterritorial jurisdiction, or ETJ, said Jennie Huerta, media and communications manager with the city of Cedar Park. She said city staff has been looking at ways to fix discrepancies between mailing addresses and municipal jurisdictions.

“The problem with living in Cedar Park but having a Leander mailing address is that it creates confusion among our citizens and members of the public regarding jurisdictional boundaries,” she said. “Voters may be unsure of which issues or candidates will be on their ballot, property owners may be confused about which city property tax rate applies to them and then similarly businesses might not realize which municipality should receive sales tax revenue from their business.”

Kimberly Reese, an assistant to the city manager, said Cedar Park submitted a request to the USPS in 2011 to change the ZIP codes in those areas from 78641 to 78613. She said the request was denied, and the city was not able to apply again for a ZIP code change for another 10 years.

Cedar Park worked with the USPS to find another option for residents in those areas, Reese said. The solution was a change to the preferred last line of the mailing address, which can now include Cedar Park but retains the ZIP code of 78641.

So residents living in those areas can now use either Cedar Park, TX 78641 or Leander, TX 78641 as the postal address for their mail. The city is currently working to obtain the same option for the commercial properties in those areas.

“The hope is that will alleviate some confusion,” Huerta said.

This is not the first time Cedar Park has experienced discrepancies between mailing addresses and municipal jurisdictions. Several businesses in Lakeline Mall fall in the city of Austin’s jurisdiction but have Cedar Park addresses, and in the past some businesses have mistakenly designated their sales tax revenue to Cedar Park instead of Austin, Huerta said. Cedar Park worked with the Texas State Comptroller’s Office to allocate the sales tax revenue to Austin, and Huerta said the city confers with the comptroller’s office each quarter to correct any errors.

Sam Bolen, a USPS spokesman for the Rio Grande District, which encompasses Austin, Corpus Christi, El Paso, Midland, San Antonio, the Rio Grande Valley and Waco, said the postal service has had issues in other parts of the state with discrepancies between mailing addresses and municipal jurisdictions, but he said changing the ZIP code is not simple.

“We don’t assign ZIP codes solely on community identity,” he said. “They are designed to facilitate the best possible delivery of the mail.”

Bolen said altering the ZIP code might require postal service staffing changes at the area post offices, and he said customers would have to learn to go to a different post office to pick up some delivered items. He said the USPS does change ZIP codes under certain circumstances, but changing the preferred last line to a mailing address is a good solution that the USPS has been implementing over the past few years.

“By not switching post offices and ZIP codes, the mail will continue to flow a lot smoother,” he said.

During a Nov. 10 City Council meeting, Cedar Park Mayor Matt Powell said he hoped the city would try again for the ZIP code change in 2021. In the meantime, he thanked city staff for working to find a solution.

“I know a lot of residents, including my parents, that will be very, very happy about this,” he said.