Private road owners must name roads

By ROBERT JAMES

Managing Editor

Many Boundary County residents who live on private roads have until 5 p.m. Nov. 27 to submit names for those roads or the county will assign names to the roads itself, Gary Falcon, county GIS technician, said.

In order for a private road to require a name, it must have three or more addressable structures on it. For example, if a driveway splits off a county road, and that driveway leads to two residences and a business, then it is a private road that needs a name, Falcon said.

So far, Falcon has identified more than 60 private roads that meet the criteria for naming.

Property owners can submit proposed names for their private roads by contacting the county GIS office by telephone at 267-5395, or through the Boundary County Web site at www.boundarycountyid.org, Falcon said.

The roads need names for two very important reasons, he said. First, emergency services must be able to locate everyone in the county, and the planned e-911 system will transmit a caller's specific address to the dispatcher as well. Second, the post office will be using the new street names and numbers for mail delivery. Once the names are assigned, the post office will phase out delivery to the old addresses, Falcon said.

Naming guidelines are available on the county's Web site. Names are limited to 16 characters, they cannot have direction names such as "north," "south," "east" or "west" in them, they cannot be spelled alike or sound the same as any other existing street name and they cannot duplicate any word already in use, Falcon said.

For example, if "Eagle Drive" is proposed and there is already an "Eagle's Landing," then the new name will be rejected. A list of all the existing road names in Boundary County is available on the county's Web site.

After the roads are named, Falcon goes about assigning house numbers to each addressable structure. Those numbers are based on the distance the property entryway is from the main road.