Will Carmel finally adopt an 18th-century practice and get addresses?

Pam Marino here, reporting on how Carmel-by-the-Sea may finally enter the 18th century. You read that right. Carmel may actually acquiesce and adopt a practice that took off in Europe in the 1700s, specifically using street addresses.

The 104-year-old town, which prides itself on its quaint village character but now faces mounting 21st-century realities, is accepting what officials in European countries figured out 400 years ago—that having numbers on houses might be helpful for things like mail delivery.

Instead of address numbers, the town is famous for homeowners naming their cottages with monikers like “Sea Haven,” “Dreamcatcher” or “Sans Souci.” (Someone made an interactive Google Map with all the names that’s fun to check out. One of my favorites from that map is “Carmelot.”)

Those names don’t get used for mail delivery. Instead, the town adopted centralized mail delivery early in the last century. Most residents and businesses have P.O. boxes at the Carmel Post Office on 5th Avenue between Dolores and San Carlos streets. Others take advantage of a free messenger service the city established in 2000 for people who may be disabled or can’t for some reason can’t make it in person to the post office.

If a resident is giving directions to their house or a business an “address” might be, using the Carmel Art Association as an example, “Dolores Street between 5th & 6th Ave.” A home would use, “San Carlos 5 SE of 14th,” meaning on San Carlos Street, five homes southeast of 14th.

Imagine you are a delivery driver trying to drop Amazon packages to someone with that type of address. Increasingly Carmelites are finding that receiving packages and using rideshare services are getting harder to do. In addition, the state of California is struggling with vague addresses provided when residents apply for Real IDs.

The suggestion that maybe it’s time to consider addresses came up on Tuesday during the Carmel City Council meeting, during a discussion about the free delivery service. That service is costing the city a lot of money—since 2013 it’s cost just under $600,000 total to deliver mail to less than 200 residents a year—and for the last three years, the council has kicked around ideas on whether to end it or find a way to reduce the cost.

The most recent plan is for the city to continue its contract with Peninsula Messenger Service until Dec. 31, 2022 for an amount not to exceed $122,000. Since it will likely cost more than $122,000 to deliver to everyone currently signed up, the city will charge residents $45 a month unless they apply for an exemption due to a physical limitation. The plan passed 5-0 on Tuesday.

“As much as I hate to say this, I think it’s time for the community to have a conversation,” Councilmember Jeff Baron said. “We’re in a much more difficult environment now than we were 100 or 50 or even 20 years ago.”

It won’t be an easy conversation. There are some that will cry about protecting village character. But progress has a way of pushing itself into any conversation and in the end will probably have the most persuasive voice.