Newton County last using postal routes

It is converting to physical addresses in $277,000 project that began in August ’09

— Newton County is the last county in the state using postal routes instead of physical addresses for mail delivery and emergency services, but the conversion is under way.

“It’s like a five-year process,” said Pattie Mills, the county’s emergency management and 911 coordinator.

The conversion to physical addresses will improve the ability of emergency, mail and commercial services to reach county residents, Mills said. At present, anyone trying to find a person in the county has to navigate based on landmarks, such as “John David’s old barn,” that are meaningful only to locals, she said.

Physical addresses will provide a definitive location for a building, as opposed to a route number that doesn’t correspond to the building’s exact location, Mills said. The conversion will mean emergency workers and delivery drivers will be able to find residences without directions or the custom-made maps used now, she said.

The conversion will also enable the county to implement enhanced 911 services, Mills said. Though residents would first have to approve a tax to pay for the service, enhanced 911 would make it possible for dispatchers to pinpoint the call for help, she said.

Mills said enhanced 911 would give dispatchers coordinates that can be passed on to a ground or air ambulance, so emergency workers will be able to go to the house that made the call, regardless of whether someone can provide directions.

“This is for emergencies, is what I try to stress to people,” she said.

A similar service for people dialing 911 on mobile phones was launched in August, Mills said, but that system is financed through a fee collected by mobile phone service providers and locates callers differently.

Mills recently took over the $277,000 project of converting the county’s rural routes to physical addresses. It began in August 2009 with a deputy assessor overlaying U.S. Forest Service maps with aerial photos provided by the state. County staff members worked with the Arkansas Geographic Information Office to map every street and structure, first on a computer screen and then on the ground, she said.

Mills said she is getting street numbers ready to put on road signs. All county roads were given a number to identify them, she said, which upset some people who prefer keeping existing road names.

Shelby Johnson, state geographic information officer, said the process of convertingto physical addresses starts by determining which roads are public and which are private.

Once the roads were labeled, Johnson said, county workers were able to start assigning address ranges, based on the length of the roads. After the ranges are set, structures are given addresses based on their location on a given road.

For example, if a house is 3,205 feet down Newton County Road 40, its new address will be 3205 Newton CountyRoad 40, Johnson explained.

Once all the new addresses are assigned, the data is sent to the U.S. Postal Service so it can match the new addresses to the routes it has been using, Johnson said. A typical house might have an address of Route 2, Box 48, but that will change to a specific address on a Newton County road, he said.

Typically, the Postal Service changes its system to reflect the new addresses before residents are notified of the changes, said Leisa Tolliver-Gay, customer relations coordinator for the agency.

Residents don’t need to do anything to make sure their mail reaches them when their address changes because of 911, Tolliver-Gay said. Once new addresses are linked to the old ones, the information is shared with customers and the addresses remain linked in the Postal Service system for three years so that any mail with the old address continues to be delivered.

Arkansas, Pages 19 on 10/23/2011

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