[1/7/03)

In 1999, the Greater Cleveland Chamber of Commerce hosted a community meeting to discuss possible  Alternate Place Names for the Cleveland area that would take in approximately seven postal routes that are currently served by Clayton and Garner. The chamber then paid for the printing and mailing of 4500 postcard surveys.  Over 1,000 were returned and after careful counting, the winner was Cleveland Springs by 20 votes.

"We notified the postal authorities and were never advised that we could not use the name. Nine monthslater a local resident saw the name while traveling in Cleveland County. Calls back and forth to the USPS in the summer of 2001 left us right where we started.  Then 9-11 and we put the matter on hold," said Deirdre Jersey, past-president of the chamber who has spearheaded this effort because the area would  like an Alternate Place Name to identify themselves outside the area and local businesses receive their mail from Garner generally after 5 p.m. on any given business day.

In early 2002 discussions commenced again with theUSPS. By June, then district manager Tom Henry, who transferred to Washington, DC and has been replaced by Ron White, would not agree to pay for or piggy-back a new name survey with the boundary survey.  Instead Henry suggested the chamber embark on an informal survey.  In an effort to make progress, the chamber distributed the informal survey thru the Cleveland Post and 4042.com.

"We received about 600 responses and many from
people who do not live in the seven affected postal routes – people who currently get their mail in Benson and Willow Spring. The leading name in the informal voting was Cleveland School.  The greatest number of ballots seemed to come from the area near the old Cleveland school," said Jersey.

The chamber submitted in writing all names used in the informal survey to the USPS for their approval – and just before Christmas a letter was received advising them that all the names are available. These include Cleveland Fields, Cleveland Grove, Cleveland Hills, Cleveland School,East Cleveland, New Cleveland, and North Cleveland.

"The results do not commit the seven carrier routes to this name because all the people who live in those routes need to have the opportunityto vote. So our energy will be devoted to either convincing the postal authorities to pay for the full new survey or raising the money to do it ourselves," said Jersey who indicated that respondents were evenly divided as to whether they would like to pick up packages in Garner or Clayton.

"In the end, whichever name is selected, it is most likely that we will get our service from the Clayton post office as they have the greater capacity to service our area," said Jersey.
 

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