ESCANABA — A newly-established committee will deal with road address issues in Delta County. Members of the Delta County Board of Commissioners voted to form the committee Tuesday.

Escanaba Public Safety Captain/Delta County Central Dispatch 911 Coordinator Darin Hunter and Delta County Central Dispatch 911 Operations Coordinator Jen Peterson spoke about road address issues at the meeting.

“What we’re finding is that there is some bad geocoding, or bad GIS mapping, from existing addresses … we’re running into problems with our emergency services,” Hunter said.

Though there have been some isolated addressing issues within Escanaba’s city limits, the issues discussed by Hunter and Peterson are almost exclusively affecting county roads. This is because they are related to Delta County’s “grid” system for naming county roads — under the system, north-south roads are lettered and east-west roads are numbered.

Peterson said the addressing issues can make it challenging for dispatchers to locate callers.

“If somebody calls us with an emergency, we want to find them quickly, and there are more and more places popping up where this is going to become really difficult,” she said.

Hunter and Peterson shared maps showing a number of roads impacted by addressing problems during their presentation. Among the roads used as examples was N. Rock 38th Road.

“With this particular road, it comes off of M-35 heading east, then it heads north, then it heads east, then it heads north — it goes all over the place, but it’s also got a couple of shoot-offs on it. Those roads are all called N. Rock 38th Road, and two of them are directly above and below each other, which means they’re in the exact same range … so there’s no way for a responder to then know if they’re going to the northern road or the southern road,” Peterson said.

Hunter said problems like these are not limited to Delta County. He noted Michigan’s House passed a bill regarding best practices for addressing earlier in the decade.

During their presentation, Hunter and Peterson also spoke about steps that could be taken towards solving addressing issues in the county. Hunter said he was able to find a guide developed in 2012 explaining Michigan’s best addressing practices, which he shared with members of the board.

“It does give us some guidance — there’s actually some forms that we could utilize to try to achieve this venture, as far as addressing these issues,” he said.

As efforts to change affected addresses one by one have been met with resistance by some of the people living at these addresses, Peterson said a county-wide ordinance could be used to make addressing changes in Delta County. She expected the costs of making these changes to be minimal.

Hunter said a committee should be put together to develop the ordinance. The new committee’s membership was not finalized Tuesday. Based on discussion during the meeting, it could include at least one county representative, one CUPPAD representative, a lawyer, Hunter and Peterson, and Delta County Building and Zoning Administrator Dan Menacher.

Hunter wanted to avoid having too many people on the committee.

“I’d like to try to keep it as minimal but as doable as possible, if that makes sense,” he said.

County Administrator Emily DeSalvo will work to put the committee together.

In other business, the board:

– agreed to bring former interim county administrator Tom Sabor back at a rate of $40/hour to help DeSalvo prepare for the county’s audit.

“If I remember right, he would just want to stay below what would affect his retirement,” Board Chair Patrick Johnson said.

– accepted an amendment to an agreement with the courthouse union for the conversion of a full-time custodian position to a building trades technician position.

– heard a report from Treasurer Sherry Godfrey on efforts to sell foreclosed properties from the 2016 tax year.

– re-appointed Cheryl Ohman to the DATA Board.

– tabled discussion on a resolution that would ask the state legislature to place the Office of School Safety in the Michigan State Police Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division.