Luzerne County 911 recommending street address number changes on Forty Fort street

Luzerne County 911 is recommending address changes for approximately 10 properties on Butler Street in Forty Fort to avoid confusion with the same addresses on Butler Street in neighboring Kingston, county officials said.

This isn’t a new issue. County 911 has been working with municipalities for more than two decades to standardize addresses and eliminate duplicates that could lead to dispatching responders to the wrong location, according to numerous past published reports.

While address problems were corrected in many of the county’s 76 municipalities, the county is still attempting to resolve those still lingering on a case-by-case basis, county 911 Deputy Director William Ives said on Monday.

The recommendation in Forty Fort came up because a resident of one of the municipalities expressed concerns about duplicate Butler Street addresses, Ives said.

Ives stressed that county 911 cannot force municipalities to change addresses.

“We are not mandating or making them do it. This is all for public safety to make sure fire, police, and other emergency services get to the right residences,” Ives said.

Forty Fort Borough Council had tabled a vote on the matter at its May 4 meeting, pending additional information from the county, according to the meeting minutes. Borough Councilwoman Amanda Gallagher also attended last week’s County Council meeting, seeking clarification about the impact of the change on Butler Street residents. County officials briefed the borough council on the matter Monday night, with no vote scheduled.

Based on past history, address changes often prompt complaints from impacted residents about the need to adjust their driver’s licenses, bank checks, and other paperwork to incorporate new addresses.

County Manager Romilda Crocamo said Monday property deeds usually don’t have to be changed because they are legal descriptions of real estate and generally do not contain street addresses. Instead, property owners must change their address of record with the county Assessor’s Office, with no fee charged, Crocamo said.

The duplicate Butler Street addresses should be eliminated because Forty Fort and Kingston also share a zip code and are covered by the same joint fire department, making it more challenging to decipher which location needs help, Ives said.

Initial 911 dispatches are based on the caller’s municipality, he said.

However, some callers use postal mailing addresses that don’t correspond with their physical municipal location and are unaware of their official municipality boundaries, he said. That’s why 911 telecommunicators are trained to also ask uncertain callers which municipality is the recipient of their tax payments, he said.

Beyond questioning emergency callers, county 911 also tries to pinpoint locations using phone company triangulation from cell phone towers, but this data can be off by more than 3,000 feet and hinges on the correct data from cell phone carriers, he said. Landline calls provide accurate locations if the carrier data is correct, although fewer people use landlines these days, he said.

For municipalities opting to accept a recommended change, county 911 assists in identifying unique and logical replacement addresses and implementing those changes through the postal service, Ives said.

In this case, the recommendation would be keeping the Butler Street name in Forty Fort but changing to a number range that is not used in Kingston, he said. That way, Forty Fort would not have to come up with a new street name and signs, he said.

Forty Fort was asked to change its addresses because it has fewer properties in the duplicate number range than Kingston, he said.

“We understand it’s a huge undertaking for them,” Ives said of Forty Fort. “We wouldn’t recommend it if it were something we did not feel was necessary.”