Street addresses could come to Carmel sometime in 2026.

A street address system is coming in 2026 for the first time in Carmel's 107-year history, after the Carmel City Council officially voted in favor of implementing one by a vote of 5-0 on Tuesday, Dec. 2.

The vote was preceded in October by a 5-0 vote of the council in favor of beginning the process of identifying an address system. On Tuesday, councilmembers heard what that system will look like before voting to move ahead with the implementation process.

Councilmember Bob Delves, who headed a committee of residents and staff members that have been studying the issue since April, laid out a numbering system that has already been reviewed and approved by a representative of the United States Postal Service as well as other agencies.

Streets from north to south will start with two digit numbers between 1-99, then progress to three digits, then four digits by the time it gets to the southern border. Odd numbers will be on the west side, even numbers on the east side.

Streets from west to east, starting with zero at the ocean, will progress by 50 each block, with the highest address numbers at just over 500.

"There are some interesting exceptions," Delves said. For example, Mountain View Avenue, that runs diagonally, will be treated as a north to south street.

(A detailed discussion is available by watching the Council meeting on YouTube.)

There is more work to do in the coming months, including assigning numbered addresses to assessor parcel numbers and developing a plan for rolling out the information to residents and businesses.

According to Emily Garay, administrative analyst, they expect the County of Monterey will take around three months, from January to March, to review address data and update their systems. In April the USPS will take about a week to upload the data. Utilities could take one to two months to incorporate the data in their systems, beginning in about April. Updating Google and Apple maps could take two to four weeks.

Implementation of addresses could be done by the end of May.

The vote on Tuesday was the first reading of the ordinance. A second reading and vote takes place at the Council's next meeting on Jan. 13.