DALTON, Ga. — Whitfield County resident Susan Cooper lives on a street with no name.
It is actually a private driveway, but four families share it.
As part of Whitfield County’s address location project, Ms. Cooper’s anonymous driveway will soon become a street with its own designation.
There’s no telling how many private roads have no names, Zoning Administrator Jean Garland said.
Emergency rescue workers say those no-name roads make it tough to find people who need help, and when minutes may be the difference between life and death.
The yearlong address location project — which was approved in December — will fix addresses to avoid confusion during emergencies.
“The sole reason behind this project is safety,” Ms. Garland said.
Whitfield County’s Commission approved an ordinance this week that finalizes the procedures for changing addresses. Structures that share numbered addresses — such as 104A and 104 B — will receive their own number.
Duplicated addresses also will receive a number of their own, streets by the same name will see changes, and the private drives will receive new names.
The task of selecting street names will fall to Kevin McAuliff, regional historic preservation planner.
Mr. McAuliff has maps from 1879 and 1908 showing names of residents living in Whitfield County. “We’re going to try to find names that have some sort of historical association with that immediate vicinity,” he said.
Then, private-drive residents will vote on one of three choices Mr. McAuliff presents. After a year, the residents can petition to change the street name to whatever they’d like, provided there isn’t a street with the same name.
Ms. Cooper said that, before the address-location project, a few neighbors had brought up the idea of establishing a private-drive street name on their own. But some neighbors didn’t want the change.
They would have to change the addresses on their checks, they complained.
“In the past, they said, ‘Do you realize what a pain that’s going to be to change your address?’” Ms. Cooper said. While she acknowledges the hassle, Ms. Cooper described the process as “an investment now to prevent future issues.”
TO LEARN MORE
For information on the address-location project, contact Brooke Bennett at (706) 428-9911.
