Posted on: Thursday, April 14, 2005
ZIP codes unchanged on O'ahu — for now
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
Postal addresses won't be changing right away, but some Hawai'i residents might not want to get too attached to their ZIP codes.
Residents of 18 outlying O'ahu communities, from Waimanalo to Hale'iwa to 'Ewa Beach and Pearl City, narrowly missed having the first three digits of their ZIP codes changed from 967 to 968.
The U.S. Postal Service had planned to make the change on July 1, but ditched the effort yesterday.
"There was this Menehune Water delivery guy who used to deliver to us," said Rene Kaji, a Servco Automotive Center employee who had heard about the proposed change and considered its implications. "And he had his ZIP code — 96744 — tattooed on his leg. I immediately thought of him."
For now, the Kane'ohe water delivery man is safe from having to go back under the ink.
Postal officials decided that the difficulties in implementing such a large-scale change, including equipment recalibration and retraining, outweighed the benefits of reserving the 967 codes for the growing Neighbor Island population, said Duke Gonzales, spokesman for the Honolulu District of the U.S. Post Office.
"That proposal (to change the ZIP codes) was withdrawn," Gonzales said yesterday. "But not necessarily permanently withdrawn. Could it happen in the future? Yes. We are always assessing ways to provide our customers with better service."
Census figures show that Hawai'i is the 14th-fastest growing state, and the Neighbor Islands are getting a lot of the increase. Standardizing of the O'ahu codes to 968 and letting the Neighbor Islands use 967 exclusively would have accommodated overall growth, according to Gonzales.
The change was to have gone into effect on July 1, according to an April 5 letter from the U.S. Postal Service's Honolulu district manager, Edward Broglio, to Mayor Mufi Hannemann.
"I wanted you to be among the first to know of the impending changes in order to prepare you for the possibility of feedback from your constituents," Broglio had written.
Broglio wrote that O'ahu postal customers who would lose their 967 codes would have a full year before their old codes would be assigned to Neighbor Island communities. During that time, he said, they could use up their old stationery and send out change-of-address notices.
When Hannemann received the letter, he asked his secretary to send copies to city department and agency heads so they could prepare for the change, said mayoral spokesman Bill Brennan.
The letter became an attachment in an e-mail. From the Internet, it passed into the coconut wireless.
Kaji got her copy of the letter from her cousin, who works in an O'ahu hotel. The credit manager at Servco also got a copy, she said.
"We were talking about customer and vendor address books, and all the checks we just ordered," she said.
Kaji decided confirmation was required. She called the newspaper. Others decided to go straight to the source.
Gonzales, whose phone number was listed in Broglio's letter, said he has been getting quite a few calls, most of them nice.
Few of the callers were complaining; they just wanted to know if their information was correct. He is telling callers that the change has been rescinded and that, for now, the ZIP codes will remain the same.
"I just wish the decision had been made earlier," Gonzales said, "or the letter had gone out later."
Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.
