Published: November 05, 2009 10:25 am      

Changes for some addresses

Some locations near McAlester’s city limits that already have street-style addresses are being re-addressed as part of a county-wide 911 plan.

Work is being done in re-addressing locations near city limits that have McAlester phone exchanges, 911 Coordinator Lisa Sutterfield explained this week. That’s happening even for locations already having a street-style address in place.

Sutterfield has received calls about the work, which is currently going on with personnel from a contract company that are driving silver and red Jeeps with the words “911 Field Crew” on them.

The work is being done to create a larger sequence of 911 addresses to prepare the way for a Pittsburg County 911 system. The plan is to establish 1,000 addresses per mile, the coordinator explained.

Even if one property owner currently possesses a lengthy stretch of property, the change to a larger sequence of addresses could be useful in the future if areas are split up with different ownerships.

Overall, the goal is for every property owner in the county to have an address useable for 911 purposes by the end of the year.

Some of those Sutterfield has spoken with have welcomed the work while others have been frustrated.

She pointed out there will be no immediate changes in mail delivery with the new addresses. After all the data has been gathered to establish the new addresses, it will then be forwarded to the postal service, according to Sutterfield. Even then, there will be an overlap period where mail will still be deliverable to the old address, according to the coordinator.

The costs for the project is provided by voter-approved charges per land and cell phone line numbers in Pittsburg County.

John Yates is the news director for McAlester Radio.