February 21, 2019
By: Dwayne Page
Over the objections of a few residents, members of the DeKalb County Emergency Communications District (E-911 Board) Tuesday night voted 6 to 1 to re-address East Main Street in Alexandria.
The action came during a special called meeting of the board requested by First District County Commissioner Dennis Slager on behalf of a group of Alexandria residents opposed to the address changes. A petition was also presented to the board signed by Alexandria citizens on the street in opposition. In addition to Slager, Danny and Pat Parkerson and Thurman Seber, who reside on East Main Street addressed the board.
The DeKalb County Emergency Communications District (E-911 Board) is authorized by the state to assign addresses and to make changes when necessary to conform with state standards for 911 mapping.
Brad Mullinax, Director of the DeKalb Emergency Communications District, said the changes for East Main Street are part of a county wide effort to make corrections and add numbers in areas where there aren’t enough. He said 416 address changes have already been made across the county within the last five years and more changes will be made as problems are discovered. “We have to send addresses to the state and they validate them and send them back for correction if there is a problem. We have already had to re-address Avant Circle, Curtis Avenue, Edgewood, Fleming, High Street, and Lavergne Streets in Alexandria and there are more we will have to do,” said Mullinax.
Mullinax said East Main Street in Alexandria, like many others across the county, is not addressed properly. “We do not arbitrarily go through and start changing people’s addresses. The previous standard for addressing this area did not allow for enough addresses. We have had this same problem in Smithville. This is a problem that is widespread and we are correcting them as we find them. In this case there is some development going on along East Main Street and we must plan for that,” said Mullinax.
According to Mullinax, the state requires that street addresses be assigned based on the length of the road rather than lots. “The way we are directed by the state through the 911 addressing standards is to assign an address for every 5.28 feet. The total length of East Main Street is 3,214 feet. If you take the 3,214 feet and divide that by 5.28 feet we should have a range of about 610 numbers on this street. Generally we do not address in single or double digit numbers. We start with a 100 block and work our way up so the range for this particular street is 100 to 710 is what it should be. East Main Street starts near the public square to Brush Creek Road. The address numbers are currently 100 to 220 so we’re about 400 numbers short of having enough addresses to service the area. All these were addressed incorrectly,” he continued.
“That doesn’t even make sense to me (addresses for every 5.28 feet),” said Slager.
“That gets you 1,000 addresses per mile so let’s say you are driving out Cookeville Highway and if everything is addressed properly and you get to 2,000 Cookeville Highway you know you are two miles out the road and that’s the reason it is done that way. Its 1,000 addresses per mile,” added 911 employee Tony Thomas.
Mullinax said potential addressing issues exist on both sides of East Main Street unless they are corrected. There is a huge piece of property on the north side of East Main Street that is being developed. There are houses under construction there. Some have already been completed or are near completion and some have not been completed but we are under the impression that much more of it will be developed in the near future,” he said.
“There is also no room on the south side of East Main Street as well. If you start a building behind your house, garage, or any kind of out building that requires electricity, the Middle Tennessee Electric Corporation requires you get a second number. They will not address off your house and won’t set a meter unless you get a separate number,” Mullinax continued.
Although addressing is done for postal and shipping purposes, Mullinax said the greater reason is to make sure emergency services can pinpoint the location of residences when a call for help comes in.
“Many of our EMS personnel come from other counties to work here in DeKalb County and they don’t know the people who live on these roads. It’s essential we try to get this as correct as possible. I know it is not popular and I wish we didn’t have to do this but its for the best,” said Mullinax.
Slager asked the board to consider another option. “The chances of subdividing these properties on the south side of East Main Street is slim to none because these are small lots and the chances of additional meters for these houses are pretty slim too because most people don’t want two light bills. Why not leave these people alone on their addresses and concentrate on fixing the new?. You have the space and numbers to correspond north versus south. I wish you would consider that for this section. I can’t see how this would be damaging to the citizens when the addresses on the northside will line up and correspond with the south side. To me it’s a common sense approach and it would probably only affect sixteen lots,” said Slager.
“We did consider that option,” said Mullinax, but the problem is more and more people are dropping their landline telephones. Twenty years ago this would not have been a problem because when you call 911 from your house with a landline, it gives us the actual address point associated with your house. In recent years people have ditched their landlines and gone to cheaper alternatives such as a cell phone or voice over IP. These services do not provide us that same type of location data to pinpoint the address associated with your house. Rather, it calculates a location based on the length of the road so if your address comes in as 114 East Main Street and you are calculated as being at 258 East Main Street then it’s going to plot that address way down the road from where you actually live based on the length of the road. A lot of the GPS devices in our ambulances work off the same mechanism. They don’t work off address point data. They work off length of the road data so there is a potential for an emergency responder being delayed getting to a resident’s house. We decided it would be best to do it all correctly and readdress the entire street and move forward,” said Mullinax.
Asked if special notes could be added to the data system for current addresses without re-numbering them, Mullinax responded saying “we don’t have a way to put notes in the system on a cellular phone call and if we put a note in there for landlines it could create a little bit of a liability issue for a dispatcher. They would be charged with having to go and look back in a note history to check footage but on a cell phone that is not possible,” added Mullinax.
“You have already created a liability issue for every house in DeKalb County that has not changed over. If you go to this (new numbers) and (first responders) go to 116 East Main and its now 247 and they can’t find it they are lost too. Who is going to be liable for that if they don’t show up at the right house? The times I have used 911 I’ve called and said my porch light will be on,” said Danny Parkerson.
Mullinax was also asked if letters of the alphabet could be added to the existing addresses without changing the entire numbers. “The problem with that is we have a data based driven system and it works off numbers. You can’t put a letter in a number field so for example an A or B will not come up in an address because its for numbers. We do use letters with apartment complexes but those addresses are in units under one roof such as building A-B-C-D. For example if we dispatched to 740 Walker Drive apartment A1 then they (first responders) know to go to the A building and look for apartment 1. That is different than responding to single residential homes,” said Mullinax.
“This is a small county and other than Smithville there is not another town in our county that compares to anything in Wilson County or anywhere else. I talked to three people with Wilson County’s 911 and they told me they never tear up a street if possible. I understand what you’re saying about footage but the person I talked to from Wilson County 911 said they do not do it (footage) in town,” said Pat Parkerson.
“We’re not talking about the country (rural areas) we’re talking about the city of Alexandria,” said Danny Parkerson
“Danny what you have to understand is I can’t address Alexandria, Dowelltown, and Liberty different that I do the county. We have to do it all the same. It has to be uniform,” answered Mullinax.
911 Board members voting to re-address the entire length of East Main Street in Alexandria were Brandon Cox, Sabrina Farler, Jerry Scott, Josh Tramel, Billy Adcock, and Jeff Barnes. Chris Russell voted no.