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07/14/2005: "911 Program Missing Names & Addresses"

The Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) were asked last Wednesday to approve an emergency appropriation to temporary fund a "Post Engineering Technician II position for Public Works (PW). In response to questioning by the BOCC of the need for the funding, the Public Works (PW) Director Jon Shannon (photo at left), told the BOCC that there have been no new names or addresses added to the 911 data base since January, when the project was last under the control of the Building and Planning Department. While the reasons for this were not fully known, Mr. Shannon informed the BOCC that what was known, was a number of problems existed with the program, and that a committee had analyzed the program and had a solution to the basic problems.

The problem resulted from a combination of "bad data in the system", and a "system" that actually consisted of three distinct systems, used by three departments (Building Department, Assessor, and Public Works), that were not compatible, and that last, but not least, some of the data in the system was incomplete. The incomplete part of the problem had to do with a change in what data had been collected. The original data in the system resulted in the taking of GIS readings of the entry locations of the points where a driveway entered the public roads, and then followed the course of the driveway to the house. This data was entered into a graphics program that allowed the County and emergency responders to locate not only a driveway, but to follow private driveways up to the proper house.

For reasons unknown, at some point a decision was made to record only the driveway entrance to the county road. It was explained to the BOCC that this is fine for driveways that serve only one house, but there are many driveways that leave the county road as one, and then become many. This has resulted in confusion when using the GIS maps. The Board approved the request to fix the problem before it became a larger -and more expensive- problem to fix