City OKs new addressing plan

The Mountain Home City Council "reluctantly" agreed to move ahead with the re-addressing system for the city, part of a county-wide process to comply with criteria set up for the new enhanced 911 (E911) system.

The move will mean almost everyone in and near Mountain Home will receive a new address in the next year to 18 months.

After nearly two years of work, during which the county completed its portion of the re-addressing, which will eventually provide a logical, consistent addressing system for the entire county, the council last week ordered the latest proposal of Power Engineering scrapped and that a modification of the original re-addressing plan be adopted.

The city will phase in the new addresses, probably beginning in about six months when Power Engineering produces the final maps.

Fire Chief Phil Gridley, Jr., gave an example of why a new address system is needed to improve response times of emergency service crews.

"Say someone calls in on a cell phone (so their address is not displayed at emergency dispatch), and they say, 'I've just hit a kid with my car. I'm at the corner of 10th and 8th.' Then they hang up. There's three to four places we could go."

The new system, Mayor Dave Jett explained, will provide clear directions.

At the heart of the addressing system approved by council last week is the division of the city into five blocks.

The first is the "center" block, composed of essentially the downtown core area, that portion of town that on a map is angled about 45 degrees from the alignment of all the other streets in town. Some historic names will be restored to some of those streets, and all streets in that area will include the word "center" in their address. For example, Jackson Street may become Jackson Street Center.

That "center" area probably will be readdressed last, because it involves so many businesses, and that should give them time to notify vendors and get their letterhead and business cards changed.

The rest of the city is divided into four quadrants, roughly dividing the east and west sides of town by the railroad tracks, and the north and south side of town by American Legion Boulevard and Airbase Road.

Each address will be identified first by its quadrant, NW, NE, SW, SE, and then by its street name.

All streets with the "street" designation in their name will run east/west and become named streets. For example, the current E. 10th North Street will become NE Eureka Street.

All streets with north/south orientations will be named "avenues" and will be numbered, and because of the change in the "ordinate" point, the current street numbers will change dramatically. N. 10th East Street, for example, will become NE 16th Avenue.

The changeover won't be easy, but will be phased in quadrant by quadrant.

The E911 committee will provide each homeowner with new street numbers to be displayed on their homes. Homeowners will be responsible for notifying their friends and family, as well as anyone they pay a bill to, of the change in address. The post office will maintain a dual addressing system for at least a year.

The new system will link into the already approved county addressing system.

The delay in approving the system resulted in large part from the "off angle" orientation of some streets in the Mountain Home core area. In some of the plans that had been proposed, it "was possible to have a 800 street address while you were living on 4th street," said Mayor Dave Jett.

And there were problems with areas such as along E. 6th South Street. A person driving south on S. 3rd East Street could reach 6th South, turn left, go one block, turn left and wind up on S. 10th East St.

With the system approved last week, home address numbers should match street numbers, greatly assisting emergency response crews.

When the transitions begin, the E911 board will notify every homeowner of their new street address.

Overall, Jett noted, when the public hearings were held on the readdressing proposal over two years ago, "the public was very supportive of the idea."

But, he admitted, "there will probably be a lot of complaining and confusion when the transition takes place. But a year after it's over, I think everyone will probably be happy with the changes."

For some people, the changes will involve a lot of work. The city, for example, will have to change 4,700 billing addresses for water/sewer/garbage bills. The Mountain Home News will have to change every address it has for both its paid and free distribution publications (more than 6,000 addresses once the impact areas adjacent to the city, which will follow the city re-addressing sytem, are included). Other businesses will be in the same boat as they change their billing systems.

Jett said the final schedule to begin the transitions have not been set. Once the final maps are approved a "ground truth" check will be made to verify "on the ground," he said, each address and the existence of a structure to go with it.

Jett said a series of public information meetings will be held at the time of the changeovers to help inform the public and answer any questions they might have at that time.

The entire system is also designed for expansion, with any development anywhere in the city or county now having an address that is consistent will all others.