Though the issue never needed council approval to proceed, the readdressing of several addresses in the city has been postponed after a vote by aldermen, and addresses included are being re-examined for necessity.

Planning Director Chris Suneson devised a plan to readdress 574 parcels, in conjunction with the U.S. Postal Service and Benton County 911 Administration.

At the regular City Council meeting Aug. 26, Alderwoman Becky Morgan protested the change, calling it traumatic for residents in reference to time-consuming and costly changes.

At the meeting of the Emergency Management Committee Sept. 4, Suneson told the group he has met with Morgan and representatives from Benton County 911 twice in an effort to eliminate some addresses in question.

“The public is concerned about everything that would have to be changed,” he said. “We are seeking alternate solutions to the sequencing problem … If we don’t have to disrupt people’s lives, all the better.”

The address change is intended to fix issues with structures numbered out of sequence, vacant lots and corner properties.

Suneson’s plan called for the change of all addresses to be completed by sections within nine months, rather than the previous method of one house on a street per year.

More than 800 addresses in the city have already been changed in what Suneson called a “seven- oreight-year process.”

Morgan said the review of the addresses is slow and tedious, but said some adjustments have been made to the 911-supplied maps to prevent some addresses from being changed.

She said she would be willing to bring the issue back to the City Council and start the sections she has already reviewed.

It was only a resolutionproclaiming support of the project that was brought to the council originally.

“It’s not the fi re department or the police department that brought this on, it was the Post Office and 911,” Alderman Dick Rooney said at the Emergency Management meeting.

“I intend to speak very forcibly at the next (council) workshop. We did 800 before, let’s just do it right,” he said.

Committee member Moe Holm agreed it would be best to do it in one swoop:“Traumatic is an overstatement, it’s more like an inconvenience,” he said.

“We are not saying it has to be done. We are working with the city,” 911 director of operations Mary Sullivan said. “We can suggest, but we don’t have the authority to say you need to change it this way. It’s all up to the city.”

Sullivan added the administration has authority on addresses in rural areas.

“We do want to make sure the correct addresses are on the 911 maps,” she said.

News, Pages 1 on 09/11/2013