Swanton plans to renumber some addresses in the town and village, and could rename two sets of roads with similar names, to limit potential issues with 911 dispatching.
“We understand it’s a pain in the neck to have to change your address,” said Brian Savage, the Swanton town administrator. “But it’s all in the interest of public safety.”
State standards adopted in the 1990s recommend municipalities use an increment of 5.28 feet, which is 0.001 miles, between successive address numbers.
Since those same standards say even- and odd-numbered addresses should be on opposite sides of the street, structures would be at least 10.56 feet away from each other — twice as far.
One benefit of this standard is that it makes converting an address to a distance easy, said Jeremy McMullen, database administrator for the state’s Enhanced 911 Board. For example, a building addressed at 1000 on a given road would be 1 mile from its start.
This can help first responders quickly determine how far away they are from an incident, he said. State standards say to measure to the middle of a structure’s driveway to determine its number, and that structures should be numbered based on where the driveway is located, not which road the building faces.
About 75% of Vermont’s cities and towns use the recommended 5.28-foot increment, McMullen said. But the rest use some other increment or, at least in part, use a system that was grandfathered in from before the state standards were adopted.
Some municipalities use increments of other distances such as 26.2 feet, which is one two-hundredth of a mile, according to the 911 Board. Most municipalities have even-numbered addresses on the right, but some have them on the left.
Swanton’s addressing system was one of those grandfathered in, Savage said. The system was set up with 50-foot increments between successive structure numbers.
Now, he said the town will make all local addresses match the 5.28-foot standard.
“That’s not entirely the way it is on all our streets and roads,” Savage said.
Savage said some structures in Swanton have long had incorrect addresses that need to be fixed. There is one area, he said where multiple structures are assigned to the same address, whereas each structure should have its own address.
Another issue is that there are two sets of roads in Swanton with nearly identical names: Bushey Street and Bushey Road, and Church Street and Church Road.
State standards prohibit this. And while the duplicate roads are located miles away from each other, their similar names have caused the Swanton Village Fire Department to get dispatched to the wrong address, said Savage, who’s also a longtime local firefighter.
“Fortunately, it turned out OK — but we never know when we won’t be as lucky,” he said.
Savage said he doesn’t yet know which streets would be renamed and which would stay as they are. Any changes would likely go before public hearings, he said.
The addressing standards are law, McMullen said, but they “don’t have a lot of teeth.” As long as a municipality has addresses that are consecutive and unique to each structure, he said, state officials don’t require changes to its existing system.
McMullen made a case for the 5.28-foot standard, though. One of its main benefits is that it’s relatively short, so the municipalities that use it are unlikely to run out of new addresses if a lot of new development goes up in a certain area.
“We’ve seen a lot of that statewide,” he said, “where they end up having to readdress roads — or sections of roads — because they don’t have enough addresses.”
