As a PACE program provider, you must know a property’s municipality
The PACE program (or Property Assessed Clean Energy) is a simple and effective way to finance energy efficiency, renewable energy, and water conservation upgrades to buildings.
PACE programs allow local and state governments, as well as other inter-jurisdictional authorities, to fund all up-front costs of energy improvements on both commercial and residential properties, which are then paid back over time by the property owner.
PACE programs can pay for new heating and cooling systems, lighting improvements, solar panels, water pumps, insulation, and more.
Challenges for PACE Program Providers
PACE program providers work closely with local governments to offer their programs. Municipalities and county governments can opt-in or opt-out of the program. In order to find out if a particular house qualifies for the PACE program, the provider needs to know if the home owner lives within the boundary that offers a PACE program.
If the address is within the incorporated city, its municipality is the incorporated city. If not, the municipality of the address is in an unincorporated area surrounded by the incorporated city.
The problem is, most home owners provide standardized mailing addresses, which may not reflect the municipality of the address. To find the true municipality of an address, programs such as PACE rely on a service that’s far more accurate and precise.
Learn more about how to find the proper municipality by address
Determining the municipality of an address
Assuming the city of San Jose in Santa Clara County, CA opts in to the PACE program, and Santa Clara County does not opt in to the program, let’s see how it affects the following 2 addresses:
Mailing Address 1:
1591 Williamsport Drive, San Jose, CA 95131
The municipality of this address is San Jose. It’s eligible for the PACE program.
Mailing Address 2:
2221 Enborg lane, San Jose, CA 95128
Although the mailing city for this address is San Jose, the physical address is actually not within the incorporated city of San Jose. The municipality of the address is in an unincorporated area within the county. Because Santa Clara county does not opt in, it is NOT eligible for the PACE program.
How to Find the Municipality by Address?
As the repository of municipality information, the US Census provides boundaries for each municipality in the US.
The only way to determine the municipality is to use a geolocation service. Such a service maps the physical location of the home and then queries the municipality database provided by US Census.
As one of the few OEM geo-coders in the US, USgeocoder provides geolocation-based municipality lookup by address. We geocode each address, identify its latitude and longitude, match it to the US Census database and then produce municipality information for the input address.
This level of accuracy and pinpoint precision has proven to be an invaluable asset to program providers such as PACE, that rely on proper data.
Interested to see our address-based location lookup service at work?
We encourage you to try our live demo.
Simply enter any address in the U.S., click on the “Free Lookup” button and nearly instantly you’ll be provided with vital, and accurate, information, including:
- Standardized address
- Geolocation codes
- Zip codes & mail delivery
- Political jurisdictions/elected officials
- Census statistics
- California sales tax (if applicable)
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How to Find the Municipality by Address