Municipality and mailing city are not always the same
A municipality is a city or town that has corporate status and its own local government. Most people think they can find the municipality of a location by merely looking at the address. That’s not always true.
Mailing city vs. a municipality
Normally, the city we see in a standard address is a mailing city, the city in which the postal office delivering to the address is located. Sometimes, this mailing city is the same as the physical city that the address belongs to.
But that’s not always the case.
When the municipality differs from the mailing city
If an address is located within an incorporated city, the incorporate city is its municipality. However, if the address is not part of the incorporated city, that means this address does not have a municipality.
Let’s find the municipality for the following 2 examples:
- Address 1: 620 Pole Line Road, Davis, CA 95618
- Address 2: 1 SHIELDS AVE, Davis, CA 95616
Here is the map that shows the location of these 2 addresses.
The city for the above 2 addresses is Davis. The area highlighted in yellow is the un-incorporated area. The area highlighted in light gray is the incorporated area.
You can see the address “1 Shields Ave” falls in that yellow box. That means this address is not part of the incorporated city of Davis.
In other words, Davis is just its mailing city. It does not have a municipality. It’s physical address should be “1 Shields Ave, Yolo County, CA 95616”.
On the other hand, the address “620 Pole Line Road, Davis, CA 95618” is in the light gray box. It’s in the incorporated area, and its municipality is Davis.
How can you find the municipality by address?
Municipality is a very important determining factor for programs that involve local jurisdictions such as PACE funding programs and California sales and use tax.
The only way to find the municipality for an address is to use a geolocation service. It maps the address and finds its relationship with the municipality database to determine if it’s in an incorporated city. You can lookup municipality for any address in the US using the live demo on USgeocoder.com. Just enter the address and zip code, press the “Free Lookup” button and you will find the municipality for the input address.
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