County Commissioner's Office

County Talk
By
Lamar Paris - Commissioner

 

Q.  Why did you blame the Post Office for all the delays in re-addressing? Wasn’t part of the problem caused by the county?
A.  First, I want to apologize to the US Post Office personnel for giving them all the blame on the new addresses being delayed in my Q & A column a couple of weeks ago.  Actually, it turns out that it is a combination of a few different issues.  The county can certainly take part of the blame as all of the data that we furnished to the Post Office was not completely accurate.  We have tried to trace the problems back to the origin and it appears that much of the problem is related to the computer software.  We are inexplicably losing some of the data that is being entered correctly into the computers.  Our software providers are trying to find out what the problem is.

Q. Are there other problems related to the re-addressing?
A.  Yes.  There is also the issue that the mapping office and the post office are trying to perform these additional duties of hunting down errors with existing personnel who also have to keep up with their every day duties.  Both of us are going to try to utilize additional personnel in order to make this transition happen as quickly as possible. 

Q. How can some addresses simply be missing?
A. There are many problems that can occur.  The 911 mapping office had to use special electronic GPS mapping equipment and ride every road, street and private drive in the county (nearly 15,000 of them).  Then a laser gun was utilized to pin point the exact location of the home.  This data then had to be downloaded into a computer, and then converted using special software to place that data on our existing county GIS maps.  To further complicate the process, the current 911 addresses are on an old computerized map that does not justify with the new maps, so special data conversion must take place.  

Q. What other problems were necessary to deal with?
A. Sometimes there are two entrances to a home and sometimes what appears to be a storage building or chicken house is actually a residence.  Sometimes what simply looks like an old road bed leading to one home, may extend to another home up on the mountain behind the first one.  As we compare our addresses with the post office, we will work through all of these issues over the next few weeks.
 
There are other problems as well. Some of the addresses that we were asked to check on simply do not exist and there is no evidence of a house ever being there, or a mailbox.  A few addresses are simply missing and we think that is primarily the result of software failure, but also some omissions as mentioned above. 

Q. How are you going to solve all of these problems?
A. We are working closely with the Post Office to complete this project as quickly as possible, but the last thing we or the Post Office want to happen is to rush the new addresses out with mistakes. There will probably be some mistakes the best we can do.  We want to thank the local Post Office, the Post Office district office, and the computer software company for working with the county and 911 mapping to make this as seamless as possible.  The good thing is that with the county and the Post Office working together, we will catch these mistakes prior to the new addresses being distributed.

Q. Do you have a new date when the addresses will be ready?
A.  We have been pushing for a deadline in the past so that we could let the public know a specific date.  However, at this time, we are not going to try to make another deadline, as there are simply too many unknowns.  We also do not want to run into a problem with making a change during the Christmas season. The county is sorry for any problems this whole process will create.   However, we have to keep focused on the fact that this will never have to be done again and the only reason for doing this is to keep our citizens safe and to provide you the most responsive emergency services available anywhere.

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