Building Permit...911 Registration

[foggy1111]

So.....the other day I mailed in a building permit application to the county where my hunting land is located. I am planning a new 30x40 pole building on 107 acres of land I own....I had talked with the county earlier and did not anticipate any problems with the permit.

The county called today....and the gal calling was quite upset with me and wondered where I came up with the address for my land. I told her I looked at the need for it on the form.....and looked at my neighbors address' and it just stood to reason that this number would be an appropriate number for my new building. SHE WAS AGAST!!...that I would "make up" such a number!!...and told me that I need to apply for a 911 number and send in another $50. to have a legal address. (I am already giving the county $240. for a building permit - And my building is going to be located near 12 avenue and 45th street in a very rural area.....so this ain't exactly rocket science.)

So....this got my goat a bit...and I decided to press this issue. I told her she could put what ever address on the application that she wanted...and unless it was required I didn't see any point in "registering" the address. She told me I needed it if I had a sewer or water....noooo.....or if I had power or other services to the building......nooooooo Well.....she could think of no other reason I NEEDED to have a number other than if an emergency. At the end of the day....she agreed I did not HAVE TO have a number for my building permit...and if I did have a number....the one I had chosen for the application would be correct....so she was going to use it. LMAO

Somtimes you just gotta wonder.

 

[ultrarunner]

Nothing surprises me much any more...

Congratulations on standing your ground and prevailing!

 

[foggy1111]

Hmmmm....how do you spell bureaurcacy? I give these clowns enough money allready in taxes....one would think they can at least assign me a number....H***, I got a tax ID number......I told her...put that number on the permit.....lol

 

[Tig]

From late fall to early spring the 911 number issued to my property would lead emergency services to a locked gate on someone else's private lane, (which I use in the summer) I requested a correction to the address. The township said no problem but it's easier said than done.
My mailing address is correct because I made it up at the post office, tax address is not. I use either address as I see fit when I need to give it out. Last fall when I recovered some stolen property the police were able to find my "new" not yet official address. UPS found me even with the street sign knocked down.
In time I hope to get things sorted out.

 

[Bird]

When we were living on 10 acres in the boondocks, our mailing address was Rt. 1, Box xx but then for the 911 emergency system, they needed a street name and number, so the county had a lady in charge of that and apparently she did a good job, but there was no charge for it at all.

But in the event of an emergency or an accident, you may someday wish you had a good address instead of complaining later about how long it took the police, fire trucks, and/or ambulance to find you.

In most cases, the numbering system is at least somewhat logical and houses are numbers in sequence, but in one town in which I did a gas leakage survey in '93, it appeared that everyone just made up whatever number they liked; not in any kind of sequential order at all.

 

[foggy1111]

I really do appreciate what you are saying Bird.....and have given that some thought....and I agree about the emergency services. But....even without a building (like now) they need an address to respond to....and that would be a made up address as it stands right now.

I just get sooo tired of paying fees, and permits and taxes for everything they can hook me for. It gets very "old"....and I pay waaay to many taxes already...the least they could do is furnish a new address (free of charge or included in the charge ) with a building permit. I rest my case.

 

[DUMBDOG]

The fifty dollar 911 fee may seem a bit much. It is not part of the building fee.

A couple of years ago a small fire started at the farm while I was away. The wife called me and I called 911 for the fire department. They arrived down there before I did, you could see the skid marks on the gravel road where they had to hit the brakes and back up for the approach. If I had had the 911 address this would not have happened. In this case a few seconds did not matter, however you never know.

I know where you are coming from, Minnesota is a very high tax state, between the real estate taxes. income tax and the sales tax. This of course does not include the breathing tax that that are going to start collecting July 1.

 

[chh]

We finally got 911 adresses here about 4 years ago. As of now there is still not a map available to UPS, Fedex, ambulance, fire or police for the addresses. If you give out your address there are still many times that you have to give out directions how to get to your house. My house technically does not have address, my mailbox does, but it is a 1/2 mile from my house. 911 sure makes me feel safe.
Of course it didn't help that when the addresses where being formatted some genius in the postal service decided all the addresses where invalid and decreed a different format for the system startup.
example
N CR 4390 ( North County Road 4390)

became

N CR 4390 ROAD

After about 6 months this was overruled and the whole county had to fill out change of address forms reverting back to the original format. And all this is only costing me how much a month???

 

[Bird]

I just get sooo tired of paying fees, and permits and taxes for everything they can hook me for.

I certainly agree with you on that. I had not heard of any fees for assigning an address to a location.

some genius in the postal service decided all the addresses where invalid and decreed a different format for the system startup.

Some sort of standardization is almost necessary, but there are usually some options. When we went from a Route 1, Box xx type of address to a streeet address, we lived at 18870 Northwest County Road 3360 and it could be written out like that or abbreviated NW CR 3360.

When some things get entered into computers, it may take years to get it changed. We currently live in the City of Corinth, a little town of 19k or so population just south of Denton. This town has no post office. Our mail carrier comes from the main post office in Denton. The post office "preferred" address is "Corinth, TX" but some mapping and/or computer systems show our zip code to be Denton, while others show it to be Corinth. I use a credit card and that company always sends the bill addressed to "Denton". I called and told them it gets delivered alright, but the preferred address is "Corinth". They said they can only change it in their computer if the post office tells them to. Me telling them the post office prefers something different ain't good enough.

 

[jdbower]

I'd probably suck it up and pay the fee. Not having an address is fine. Having an address is also fine. Now you'll be stuck in the netherworld of neither having nor not having an address. Since the number appears on some paperwork, but not others, there may be nothing to prevent your pseudo-address from being automatically assigned when your neighbor subdivides his property. Should you decide to sell you may also be passing on these issues to whoever buys/inherits your property when they try to add a power line drop. As annoying as it is to spend $50 today, you may end up needing to spend a lot more time and money in the future just to fix mistakes having a half-way address could create.

 

[tallyho8]

My property was half of a parcel that a family had owned for many years. They had subdivided the property in 1930, built a home on the other parcel for their son and they used the same address and mailbox. When I bought half of this property (16 acres) with a home, I wanted to have my own mailbox instead of sharing it with the other house, so I needed an address.

I wanted to do things right so I went to the courthouse to find out how to handle it. They said the property was subdivided the "old" way and had to be resubdivided by the current laws and ordinances. The re-subdivision would cost me $300 and take about 6 months plus I had to get a new survey which costs $10,000 in my area. I left.

I picked an address half-way between my two neighbor's addresses, went to Home Depot, bought a mailbox, post, bag of concrete and the stick-on numbers 7XXX and went home and put it up. I started getting junk mail in it the next day.

I have had no problems in the years since except that the waterworks won't change my service address from the old one and sends my mail to my mailing address, but when I have a problem I have to give them the old service address.

 

[JB4310]

What good would the 911 registration be if you don't have a land line there anyway? Isn't it for when you dial 911 and can't speak cause your incapacitated for some reason, that they can then send help by knowing where the call is coming from?
Didn't know it was for shipping companies like UPS etc. or are you guys saying there's some master system that all the mapping software uses like Google and map-quest etc.that's based on that 911 system?

Sounds like you stood your ground and turned the tables on them, it's satisfying to see some town official worker squirm a little when they realize you were right from the beginning.

JB,

 

[Greenmountain Farmer]

What good would the 911 registration be if you don't have a land line there anyway? Isn't it for when you dial 911 and can't speak cause your incapacitated for some reason, that they can then send help by knowing where the call is coming from?
Didn't know it was for shipping companies like UPS etc. or are you guys saying there's some master system that all the mapping software uses like Google and map-quest etc.that's based on that 911 system?
Google your address and see what you get
Tom in Vermont

 

[Bird]

Isn't it for when you dial 911 and can't speak cause your incapacitated for some reason, that they can then send help by knowing where the call is coming from?

That is only one of many reasons for having 911. By only being 3 digits, it's quick and easy to dial, it's easy to remember, and it's the right emergency number in most parts of the country (we used to have different phone numbers for every police department, fire department, and ambulance service). It also cuts down on prank calls because the person taking the call can see whether it's actually coming from the location the caller says it is. I wouldn't say it was done for shipping companies like UPS, FedEx, etc., but I guess that's a side benefit.

The change to 911 has been a very slow, and expensive, improvement. I don't even know just when it started, but in May, 1972, I visited Seattle and one of the purposes of my visit was to see their "E911" system. A few places had gone to the 911 phone number but didn't have the "Enhanced" version that Seattle had; i.e., a display of the phone number and address the call was coming from (something nearly everyone has now, but not 30 years ago). I was promoted to Captain some 4 years later in 1976 and became commander of the communications division, and when we moved into the new city hall on April 1, 1978, was the first time we had a single phone number for fire, police, and ambulance. Dallas still didn't have 911 until the mid-80s. I'd been trying to get it for over 10 years.

The 911 system was more complicated to implement than most folks realize. For example, there are 3 separate cities within Dallas; i.e., completely surrounded by Dallas; Highland Park, University Park, and Cockrell Hill. Each has it's own police and fire department, residents have Dallas mailing addresses, and the telephone exchanges do not correspond to jurisdiction boundaries. So it required a lot of computer programming for the phone company to send 911 calls to the proper cities from each phone. Before I retired I was commander of the planning and research division and one of my employees' full time job was coordinating addresses and phone numbers with the telephone company, other emergency agencies, etc. as new homes, apartments, businesses, etc. were developed.

Oops, excuse me for rambling.

 

[PILOON]

Our small town hired consultants to arrive at a uniformized numbering system.(read $$$)
The reccomendation came down as a N-S, E W 'grid system', i.e., 9 is north of 8 and 6 is west of 5.

We live on a lake! that is not N S nor E W. and the grid lines intersected in the middle of the lake.

It took the fire departement a half hour to find a fire location and when this was brought up at counsul meeting they reverted back to the old sequencial ascending number system.
Naturally the consulting firm still got paid.

 

[chh]

What good would the 911 registration be if you don't have a land line there anyway? Isn't it for when you dial 911 and can't speak cause your incapacitated for some reason, that they can then send help by knowing where the call is coming from?
Didn't know it was for shipping companies like UPS etc. or are you guys saying there's some master system that all the mapping software uses like Google and map-quest etc.that's based on that 911 system?
JB,

It is still your address, whether you have a phone or not. What else is a shipper to use? I don't have a landline phone and since it was going to cost 10 grand to get one, I'm not likely to get one. I'll have to be carefull if I call in an real emergency, we had a small grass fire a couple of years ago and I called 911. If I use my cell and call from the south side of my house I get another counties 911 because of the tower i connect to. On the north side I get my counties 911.

 

[Bird]

Even in town where all the utilities are available, more people, like our next door neighbors on the north side and the neighbors behind us, have no land line. They just each have a cell phone.

 

[tommu56]

I thought the new cell phones were suppose to give the latitude and longitude of the phone not the tower to the dispatcher?

tom

 

[Bird]

I thought the new cell phones were suppose to give the latitude and longitude of the phone not the tower to the dispatcher?

tom

Tom, has that been implemented yet? I saw a few things in the news about it some time ago, but nothing recently. As you might expect, some are in favor of it and some opposed. Since I don't figure on being anywhere I'm not supposed to be, and since I don't always know what street name and block number I'm on, I like the idea myself. And if it's implemented, will I have to get a new cell phone instrument? I would guess so.

 

[EddieWalker]

When I first bought my land, I had 911 create me a new address. They gave me an even number, which would put me on the other side of the road. It made deliveries very unpredicable, with everyone from UPS to Fed Ex and even the post office returning my mail because nobody lived on that side of the road.

When I split my land, I applied for a new address for the part I kept. This time, I made sure to get an odd number. Funny how something that simple can make such a big difference.

Of course, it wasn't all roses. The mail carrier didn't like to drive to me gate, so she insisted that the mail box be across the road. I tried to fight them on that one, but they went and sited union regulations on me and I gave up after three trips to the post office and a visit out here by the branch supervisor.

None of those address's from 911, or anything else with the post office cost me anything. I never heard of having to pay a fee for an address. Is this new or is it a local fee?

Eddie