Houlton council to reconsider E-911 numbering

HOULTON – Less than a month after rejecting a plan for numbering buildings in the town for Enhanced-911, the Town Council tonight will reconsider the proposal.

On July 14, councilors rejected 4-1 an ordinance amendment that would have required building owners to display blue signs with white reflective numbers.

Much of the concern centered on the color of the signs, which some people thought would clash with the color of their homes.

The proposal has the support of the town’s fire, police and ambulance departments, as it would make location of emergencies easier and faster.

The town has budgeted $10,000 to purchase one sign for each building.

Councilor John Fitzpatrick was the only councilor to vote in favor of the plan.

“I was just in shock at that,” he said last week of the vote to kill the proposal. “I couldn’t believe that they voted it down.”

At the council’s July 28th meeting, Fitzpatrick was successful in getting his fellow councilors to reconsider their previous action.

The current ordinance adopted in 1998 requires that all properties with structures be marked with conspicuous reflective numbers a minimum of 4 inches in size.

“I feel they should be blue and white,” Fitzpatrick said last week, noting that he had taken time to drive around the town to see how well people were complying with the existing ordinance.

“I’ll bet 90 percent of the residences are not in compliance,” he said.

He added that he had personally spoken to about 30 people about the blue and white system and only three were opposed.

The need for a better numbering system was made clear in two separate incidents on Aug. 6.

In the first, the Houlton ambulance was called to an emergency on B Road. Although the house in question was marked in accordance with the existing ordinance, the numbers could not be seen clearly from the road.

Paramedics drove three-tenths of a mile past the house before finding a number on another house they could see. They had to radio back to the dispatcher to get a physical landmark to find the house where the emergency was.

Later that afternoon, the fire department was called to a reported fire at 26 Green St.

An out-of-town construction worker driving on the street saw smoke coming from a house window. Unable to see a clear number on the house, he used the number on a nearby utility pole – number 26 – which he apparently mistook as the house number.

The location of the actual call was about 1,000 feet farther up the street from the utility pole.

“It’s a matter of time getting there when it most counts,” Fitzpatrick said of the need to improve the town’s numbering system. “That’s what I feel E-911 was put in for, for quick emergency response.”