SUPERIOR, Colo. — Residents of Superior are joining a national effort to lobby for the passing of ZIP code reform bills in Congress, as the Colorado town remains without a ZIP code of its own.
Superior Mayor Pro Tem Jacob Serbu traveled to Washington D.C. with other leaders across the state to advocate for Senate Bill 2961 and Senate Bill 1455.
“Overall, there's 29 states that are looking at getting zip codes for their communities. 69 of those communities are pushing for Senate Bill 2961 and 14 communities are pushing behind Senate Bill 1455. So in total, there are 83 communities in 29 states that are looking to get their own zip codes for their communities,” Serbu said.
There are many ways residents benefit from having a zip code, according to Serbu, and it’s not just a sense of community.
“The biggest thing are sales taxes,” Serbu said. “Every time Superior would go up to a point of sale online, it would default to Louisville, so we would essentially be losing tax revenue to our neighbor.”
Then there’s insurance rates. Serbu said premiums are tied to the number of accidents and claims.
“When you're grouped into a larger demographic, such as we are with Louisville, we're getting the lack of a benefit of having higher incident rates,” he said. “We'd like to see our residents hopefully pay a much lower amount of money than they currently spend on their insurance premiums per year."
Perhaps, most concerning is a delay in emergency services.
“Ambulances can be going to the wrong address in a town when they could have been going to a town 20 miles away or 20 minutes away, certainly lengthening the time of crisis for an individual,” Serbu explained.
Serbu said Superior tried to get a zip code back in 1993 and 2000, and the U.S. Post Office told them, “No.”
“We're trying it again right now. We're pushing really hard, and we're willing to push this stone up the hill as many times as it takes for our communities,” Serbu said.
He does plan to travel back to the nation’s capital if needed. The process to get a zip code won’t be quick, Serbu said. It could take until next fall until we see something done.
