Naming private roads in county will aid 911 response
BY JEFF B. FLINN Managing Editor
The naming of two private roadways in Kendall County may launch a slew of new road identification, in order to improve emergency response throughout the county.
Kendall County Commissioners unanimously approved two such road name changes at their final meeting of 2023, on December 27 -- one along FM 3351 and one on State Highway 46.
“It’s for safety reasons, so emergency responders can find the houses in an efficient manner,” Nathan Lickteig, county GIS specialist and 911 coordinator, told commissioners. “As this comes up more often ... we decided we need to keep track of these and name them as they come in.”
County Judge Shane Stolarczyk said the road name request “is not an isolated incident. We are going to be focusing on 9-1-1 safety across the board.”
The one-mile-long road leading off FM 3351 is a private road – soon to be known as Riebe Lane – where a family that owns several tracts of property off the road are building another residence.
The second is Double Diamond Ranch Road, on Highway 46 West, where the Double Diamond Equestrian Center is located.
The equestrian center has five accesses and about 20 buildings on the property, Lickteig said, on roads all privately maintained.
“(The owner) has requested two addresses, one for the equestrian center, and one for a house he is building on the backside of the property that he wants addressed as well,” he said.
Precinct 1 Commissioner Christina Bergmann said she is seeing more and more instances of multiple homes on properties.
“I know this has become an issue for emergency responders because the driveways, per se, are not named when there are multiple accesses off of one driveway,” Bergmann said.
Precinct 2 Commissioner Andra Wisian approved of the change, noting it will clarify any uncertainty or indecision when first responders arrive.
“It can get confusing when you have roads that are named but they aren’t roads, they’re somebody’s private drive,” Wisian said.
Stolarczyk said the county will continue this trend of naming private roads.
“This is the direction the county is going with a lot of these roadways that are private,” Stolarczyk said, “that have multiple folks living on them using the same address -- a step toward naming these private roadways, to help assist our first responders.”
Stolarczyk said several resi- dences or businesses that share a single address will have to issue new addresses with the newly selected street names.
“There may be a slight inconvenience,” the judge said. “You may have to change your address on a few documents, but this is a trend, to protect the citizens and make it easier for our law enforcement and first responders.”
“If 9-1-1 is called and there’s an incident out there, they know exactly where to go,” he added.
Lickteig said he will enter the street names and any new addresses into a database that will be sent to the Alamo Area Counci, of Governments.
“They send it off to all the GPS companies. It would populate correctly in a few months,” Lickteig said.
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