County, city differ over application of E-911 By JOE REDMON During last week’s Brandenburg City Council meeting, the council had a first reading of an ordinance establishing a protocol for the naming and numbering of streets and renaming some streets. They stated plainly their intent “not” to change any addresses within the city. This put the city on a potential collision course with the county government. The county started an initiative almost two years ago to maximize available technology to increase the capabilities of our county’s emergency services. Part of this effort would create a master street address guide, creating a digital map of the county, as well as setting the conditions for Phase II of E-911, further enhancing emergency service response times. In order to do all this, the E-911 committee wants to change practically every address in the county. And this includes Brandenburg. The operative question is this: Is it necessary to change everyone’s address in order to leverage the necessary technology which will enable us to have and maintain a state-of-the-art emergency service? To understand this story, one must appreciate the stakes. There is much argument over the exact cost to changing your address. However, there is clearly a monetary cost involved, ranging from negligible to hundreds of dollars. The post office will continue delivering your mail for one year after any change. This must be measured against the cost the county incurs in not being able to utilize available technology to improve our emergency services. What value can we place on improving response time, even one minute? Is there a value to having the ability to locate (via digital cell phone technology) an overturned tractor which is trapping its user? And do we need to change our addresses to get all this high tech gadgetry? I’ve been unable to answer this question definitively and this fact rings true throughout this entire issue. Yes, the E-911 committee could utilize GPS technology to manually draw a digital map of the county, matching current street addresses to assigned grid locations. It would be a costly and time-consuming process and would delay implementation of Phase I of E-911 for up to 18 months, according to Bill Lacy, of the Meade County Sheriff’s Department. Mr. Lacy has been hired especially to complete the E-911 process, as he has experience doing this for Hardin County in the early 1980s. However, the current addresses utilized in Brandenburg are by most accounts a mess. And this still doesn’t address the duplication problem, nor does it integrate the new addresses and street names being assigned to county roads. And it still doesn’t give us a uniform standard to utilize when assigning future addresses and makes the daily, weekly, or monthly updating of such a database a nightmare. But, could it still be done? Still, elected representatives are charged by their constituents to discharge their duties on their behalf, not others’. Elected officials are quite often unwilling to make tough decisions for fear of losing votes in an election. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case here, as we have just completed an election cycle and won’t repeat the cycle for four years. According to the city officials I spoke with, they feel this has been pushed upon the city to make others’ jobs easier and it isn’t necessary, besides. Councilman Bradley Johnston stated plainly that he felt the county didn’t consider the city during its decision-making and didn’t inform the city until decisions were already made. It is his understanding that all upgrades could be accomplished without changing addresses. Mayor Ronnie Joyner acknowledged he knew about the E-911 committee’s work, but had been briefed there would “be a few name changes and a few numbers would have to change.” When earlier this year the E-911 committee communicated its final plan, every address in the city suddenly would need to change, except for two. He felt betrayed. And we must be honest about another aspect of this story: no politician wants to be blamed for changing people’s street address, especially when the political leader can’t articulate a very good reason why it is necessary to do so. And this reason is not readily apparent and hasn’t been adequately communicated to current leadership. Logically, when policy makers decide to “do” something, they must consider the cost involved in completing it. Conversely, and just as importantly, they must consider the cost of “not” doing that something. If changing everyone’s address is something leadership is willing to do, this must be the stated goal and the rationale must be communicated to people. If leadership isn’t willing to change everyone’s address, the next question would be, “what would it take to do this without changing everyone’s address?” What would be the cost if we decided not to change addresses? Obviously, past leadership decided not to change our addresses. According to one current magistrate, Don Callecod, county leadership has already decided this tough political issue and an election has occurred since that decision. He is livid over the council’s uncooperative attitude and says this issue is heading for court, as he believes the county’s ordinance takes precedence, according to KRS. He sees the city council’s action as simple evasion and more “politics as usual,” with the city “screwing” the county yet again. In his mind, the county has already agreed to change the names of many roads which conflict with Brandenburg street names and has already completed all necessary work inside of Brandenburg. He sees this as “fifteen hundred holding up progress for the rest of us.”
|
