A street, by any other name, is still a street

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

About three years ago, Charles City’s Dennis Petersen moved from outside the city limits to a new home on Yorkshire Boulevard.

Or maybe it was Yorkshire Drive. Petersen isn’t sure. Neither is anyone else, it seems.

The sign says “boulevard,” but the post office insists it’s “drive.”

At a work session on Wednesday, Petersen told the Charles City Council that when he moved, he had to change his address for all his official contacts, the same as everyone else has to do. Only in Petersen’s case, he received several letters in return saying there was no such street as Yorkshire Boulevard, and that the post office would not accept that address.

“That was a big surprise to us, since that’s what the street sign said,” said Petersen, who noted that the Charles City Directory also lists the street as drive. “We moved to what we thought was Yorkshire Boulevard, and we’ve been told, ‘no, it’s Yorkshire Drive,’” Petersen said. “Some places just call it Yorkshire.”

Petersen said that the discrepancy creates more problems than just a debate over a name.

“Our passports, drivers licenses, credit cards, insurance, Social Security, Medicare — the list is longer than my arm,” he said. “We have to go back and change everything.”

The street is located on the east end of town, off Lakeshore Drive just past the Elks Lodge on Clark Street. City Administrator Steve Diers said that the name discrepancy came up during the census.

“It should be ‘boulevard,’ but at some point it started showing up as ‘drive’ in various places,” Diers said. “Various entities, including the U.S. Postal Services, and apparently, the U.S. Census Bureau have it as ‘drive.’”

Diers said a lot of it ties in to the state E-911 emergency line, which refers to it as “drive.”

No one seems to know when or why the street changed from boulevard to drive, but City Engineer John Falls said that all addressing goes back to the state E-911 system. Fallis said that the street is referred to as “boulevard” in all the city mapping and by the Charles City Police and Fire Departments, and that’s what they would prefer.

“A street that’s a drive is supposed to have two accesses on the same thoroughfare,” Fallis said. “Yorkshire doesn’t fit that criteria.”

Fallis said that the county assessor refers to the street as a drive, while online mapping systems such as Google Maps and others are about 50-50 — some list the street as a boulevard and some as a drive.

“We’re going to make a lot of people have to change their addresses, if we call it boulevard,” said Charles City Mayor Dean Andrews. “If we call it drive and we make the change, there won’t be as many residents who have to change, but the question will be, is it proper because of the E911 system?”

Fallis said the street was initially platted as a boulevard, and that the council has the power to change the name, and all the city offices would comply with the change. He said it would be allowable and not a problem with the state E-911 mapping.

Diers said that an informal survey was taken of about 30 residents who live on the street, and about 20 responded. Diers said that most of those who responded refer to the street as “drive,” although a majority had no preference or did not respond.

City Clerk Trudy O’Donnell said that if the council chooses to change the name, the post office would be contacted and it would go with the official change.

Diers said that if the council desired to leave the street as boulevard, no further action needed to be taken. If the council would like to change the name to drive, it would have to take action at a future meeting. Whatever the council decided could require residents to potentially change their addresses and update documents such as driver’s licenses and passports.

In the end, the council decided to gather more information and feedback from the people living on the street before the council brings it to a vote on whether or not to change the name.

Petersen said he believed that there would be fewer problems for individuals if the name were changed to drive, because that’s how the post office currently recognizes it.

“It’s listed as both places at the federal, state, county and local levels, and I don’t care what we call it, I just want some consistency,” he said.

Council member DeLaine Freeseman said it should be left up to the people who live there.

“I really could care less what we call the dumb thing,” Freeseman said. “They’re the people living there, let them decide how they want to go, and we’ll follow their lead.”