County to fix address errors

Orange County government officials are nearly finished drafting an ordinance to fix more than 10,000 local address errors.

If approved by the Board of Orange County Commissioners, the ordinance would affect approximately 15 percent of county addresses and improve services ranging from mail delivery to emergency responses.

Geographic Information Systems Director Steve Averett said the ordinance would fix more than 2,000 address errors and more than 100 street errors in areas the county has addressing jurisdiction over.

Problems include out-of-sequence house numbers and streets that do not have signs posted.

If the ordinance is implemented, property owners would be responsible for fixing house numbers and adding signs to private drives, or face fines after a six-month grace period.

Averett said no new employees would need to be hired to implement the ordinance.

“The cost should be minimal,” he said.

Because Orange County only has addressing jurisdiction on about 34 percent of county land, other jurisdictions will have to adopt the ordinance for the entire county to be affected.

“It could take a year or more to work out an intergovernmental agreement,” Averett said.

Emergency Services Director Frank Montes de Oca said fixing the errors would help firefighters and police get to homes faster.

Montes de Oca said problems are especially common in the north, south and rural areas of the county, where confusion arises because many streets have similar names and incorrect address numbers.

“I think that for the individual calling because they’re having trouble breathing or because they have a sick child, it is worth it,” he said.

Errors have accumulated over time because no county address database existed until 2003, before which they were stored in notebooks, Averett said.

A geographic information system was implemented in 2007.

“We have one of the most modern addressing systems in the state,” Averett said. “The database model was able to expose all of the errors.”

A similar effort was made in 1987 when officials began to convert rural route addresses to a grid system. The effort ended in 1991 after facing resident resistance.

Another ordinance to correct addressing problems was drafted but not adopted in 1993.

County Commissioner Alice Gordon said it’s time for the project to move forward.

The county information technologies department estimates it will present the formal version of the ordinance to the commissioners in August or September.

Contact the City Editor at city@dailytarheel.com.