This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Note to Taylorsville residents: You are not being annexed into neighboring West Valley City.
A typo by a contractor working for the U.S. Postal Service sent a survey from West Valley City that was meant for people in the 84128 ZIP code to 84129 — a ZIP code specific to Taylorsville.
The survey is for residents with 84118, 84119, 84120 and 84128 addresses — who are mostly in West Valley City but also include some living in Kearns and South Salt Lake — and asks whether they support a proposal to change the "preferred city name" of those four ZIP codes from Salt Lake City to West Valley City.
Taylorsville City Administrator John Inch Morgan said he received a handful of calls Monday from upset residents in the 84129 ZIP code asking what was going on, with at least one caller wondering if municipal boundaries were being tweaked to put him in West Valley City.
Morgan said no one will end up in a new city and the Post Office is sending out an apology to the 84129 addressees. In addition, surveys will be sent to 84128 residents.
For each ZIP code, the Postal Service designates a "preferred city." The post office at 3490 S. 4400 West is listed as a branch of the Salt Lake City Post Office.
West Valley City administrators say in a report recommending a designation change that it is often difficult or impossible to use an address different from the preferred city when ordering products online or shipping goods.
"Furthermore, the database of preferred cities is used frequently by businesses in researching potential locations for expansion or relocation," the report says. "As a result, West Valley City does not obtain the name recognition that would ordinarily come to such a large community."
West Valley is Utah's second-largest city and has a population of about 133,000.
In Taylorsville, 84129 came into use on July 1, 2011, and took the place of the 84118, 84119 and 84084 ZIP codes in that city. Officials there had lobbied for years for the unified ZIP code as a way to sell Taylorsville as a separate entity from neighboring communities and to gather more accurate demographic information.
Twitter: @PamelaMansonSLC