County approves charges for 911 service

Some county residents may be able to use their new address as early as Jan. 31

By Mary Sprosty

Phone lines for 911 are installed and the county board has approved an amount to charge residents to recover phone costs once 911 is in use. The County Board approved a $.38 charge per month for three years to recover the one-time cost for phone line installation and a $.38 charge per month indefinitely for reoccurring costs to maintain and operate the lines.

The charge will appear on the customer's phone bill and the money will be kept by the phone companies to recover the cost of upgrading their lines.

911 coordinator Julie Cipra said instead of paying $105,000 directly out of the county budget to the four phone companies who had to upgrade their lines for 911 use, state statutes allows the county to spread the payments out.

"We had two choices. We could use a tax levy, or authorize the phone company to add a charge to their bill," Cipra said.

Cipra said charging per phone access line assures only people using 911 are charged for it. Charges will not appear on phone bills until the system is in use. Cipra hopes to have 911 fully operational by the end of April.

Status of 911

Cipra says the readdressing for 911 is complete and the information has been forwarded to the Post Office. "The mail carriers have been great. They check every single address to make sure we have the same information," Cipra said. Once the local post offices are finished with the data, they forward it to either Minneapolis or Madison, depending on their area zip code.

Madison will key in the data for all zip codes beginning with 53 (Prairie du Chien and Wauzeka) and Minneapolis will key in data for all zip codes beginning with 54. Cipra said once the post offices have finished updating their databases, the information will be forwarded to the phone companies for the same thing.

Address change before 911

The new addresses will be in use before 911.

"Once the post office approves your address, you will receive a letter in the mail telling you to begin using that address," Cipra said.

Old addresses will forward for up to one year, Cipra said.

The new addresses will be given out before the phone companies have had a chance to finish their portion of 911 preparation. "Just because you have received authorization to use your new address does not mean 911 is in use. The addresses will be in place before 911," Cipra said.

"This will give everyone a chance to use their new address and work out any problems before 911 begins," Cipra said.

Cipra said everyone should take their letter and physically check their fire number of house number. "Mistakes may have been made and we want them all corrected as soon as possible."

Not all county residents will get their new addresses at the same time. "The letters will go out by zip code," Cipra said.

Cipra said Wauzeka will be the first to receive their new addresses, since they were the first to get their information processed. Cipra said Wauzeka residents could have their new addresses approved by the postal service by the end of January.

Not everyone will receive a new address. Most addresses within the City of Prairie du Chien limits will stay the same.

All rural route addresses will be changed to a physical address. Every home will be assigned either a street address or fire number.

All fire numbers are in place, with the exception of new homes built after October.

Cipra said some city addresses will change. "We thought this would be a good opportunity to clean up some of the addressing in Prairie du Chien. We have some very old addresses that are no longer in sequence and some homes that are actually addressed to the wrong block," she said.

Cipra said they eliminated most partial addresses. (For example: 115 1/2.)

"We didn't eliminate all of the 1/2 numbers downtown, because there weren't enough numbers. We would have had to readdress the entire street, and we wanted to save businesses the expense of redoing all of their signs and stationary," Cipra said.

Cipra said the addresses still divided in fractions have additional notes in the computer data base to help emergency personnel find their location. "If I had the data, I would make a note to use the side entrance or back stair case for access to a specific apartment."

How the system works

When a resident dials 911, their call will automatically be directed to the Sheriff's Department or Prairie du Chien Police Department, depending on where the call is made from. The departments will have computers providing the address the call is made from, the owner of the property, renters residing at the property, and the phone number.

If requested, personal information can also appear on screen. This is useful if someone has a heart condition or another condition they want the department to be aware of. All information is protected and will not be given out. Unlisted numbers and other protected information is identified as such.

Additional service

Cipra divided all addresses into ranges to further assist dispatchers with emergency service. Although many counties have not yet done this with their 911 data, Cipra felt this was necessary because an address may carry one zip code, but be in a different municipality.

"Some other counties have to literally look at two different terminals. Their 911 screen tells them the address, but a different municipality may provide fire protection."

Cipra used Taylor Ridge road as an example of how complicated dispatching emergency service can be without adequate data. Fire numbers between 48900 and 51099 on Taylor Ridge Road have a Gays Mills zip code, are located in Haney Township, and are served by the Gays Mills Fire Department, Steuben First Responders and Boscobel Rescue Squad.

Another set of fire numbers on the same road are served by a different group of emergency personnel.

"People will receive faster, more efficient emergency service if the dispatchers know who to page for each call," Cipra said.

Cipra said adding all this information meant more work on her part, but feels it will pay off in the future. "We could have rushed and had 911 up by now, but it would not have been as good of a system," she said.