Richard Froese
South Peace News
Big Lakes County has taken steps to update rural addressing and replace missing and faded address signs to help people find specific locations.
At its regular meeting Nov. 22, council directed administration to prepare a cost estimate to purchase and install municipal address signs for areas missing rural addressing signage in the county in its 2024 budget.
Council also wants to ensure addresses are accurate to aid emergency services and utility companies.
“Maybe we should collaborate with external emergency services to make sure we have the same addresses for the same locations,” said Grouard Councillor Jeff Chalifoux.
Some council members stated emergency services and utility companies are often confused by addressing in some areas of the county.
Faust Councillor Robert Nygaard agrees accurate addresses on signs is vital for emergency vehicles to respond to the correct location.
“For fire services, proper signage is important,” said Nygaard, a longtime firefighter with the Faust district of the Big Lakes Fire Services.
Reeve Tyler Airth said rural addressing is an issue in some areas of the county.
“A lot of our rural addressing is working, some is not,” he said.
At council’s regular meeting Oct. 11, Kinuso Councillor Roberta Hunt expressed concerns about municipal addressing in hamlets, reported Pat Olansky, director of planning and protective services.
After the Village of Kinuso dissolved in 2009, the addressing was inconsistent with the rest of the hamlets in the county and the provincially-endorsed municipal address system.
“Administration began to re-address Kinuso in the years since dissolution, however this project remains substantially incomplete,” Olansky told council.
During budget deliberations, she recommended council allocate funds in the operating budget to purchase signs for signs missing and for a contractor to install the new signs.
“Administration is presently working on developing a project scope and cost estimate,” Olansky said.
Figures will be presented at special meetings Dec. 4-5 to discuss and draft interim operating and capital budgets for 2024.
Big Lakes is a member of the Alberta Municipal Data Sharing Partnership, which reaches many provincial and nation-wide organizations such as emergency services, navigational systems, utility service providers and provincial departments such as Elections Alberta. Fire services, with dispatch in Grande Prairie, uses rural addresses as well as legal land descriptions, Olansky noted.
The County provides digital data updates.
ATCO and Telus do not readily accept rural addresses for new services.
Big Lakes adopted its first municipal addressing bylaw Aug. 9, 2006. The bylaw states the cost associated with the initial sign and installation at the primary access would be covered by the County.
Administration is currently reviewing Bylaw 04-2006 to ensure it accurately reflects the procedures that have been in place sine the bylaw was adopted, she said.
It is the responsibility of the geographic information system (GIS) co-ordinator to assign addresses that comply with the provincial standard and the rural addressing system bylaw and to update the GIS data base, Olansky says.
Since the 1970s, the Alberta government gradually implemented a standardized rural addressing system. Big Lakes County’s addressing bylaw was established using the Alberta Municipal Affairs addressing guidelines created in 2004.
Most larger municipalities started using rural addressing in the 1990s.