I am pleased that Freeborn County is finally moving ahead with rural addressing.

Tuesday, July 31, 2001

I am pleased that Freeborn County is finally moving ahead with rural addressing. Anything that helps the fire department, ambulance and sheriff find our house more quickly during an emergency will be an improvement over the current system. Once the changes are made, we should be able to dial 911 and the county emergency dispatch center will see our address and location on a screen connected to the phone. No longer will we have to ask our kids to memorize our fire call number or display a card with the number near all of our phones. It’s hard to keep that number memorized, though, even for me, when it gets used so infrequently. The only times I’ve needed it were when I got burning permits at the courthouse, when, of course, I didn’t have it with me.

There will be costs associated with this change – and confusion – as most of us in the rural areas of Freeborn County get new street names and addresses. But it will lead to a better place to live for all of us. Besides helping in emergencies, it also means that far-flung relatives will finally be able to type our address into Mapquest and get directions to where we actually live (and not some house on First Street in Albert Lea – the computer’s best guess up until now). I suspect that will be true for others, as well.

It still annoys me that the process took so long to complete, and I guess I’m worried that something, or somebody, will get in the way again. Change is certainly inevitable, but it is also almost always a difficult proposition; it means that we will have to get used to doing some things differently for awhile.

Change is resisted – often for very good reasons. The traditional definition of &uot;conservative&uot; describes skeptics who stand in the way of change, asking questions, examining issues, and challenging supporters of change to demonstrate the value of what is proposed. Before we start mucking about with the way things are now, we had better be fairly certain that the &uot;new&uot; way will really make a difference for the better. This kind of resistance is helpful.

But there are also less helpful reasons (and ways) to be opposed to change, reasons that relate more to some people’s fear and selfishness, regardless of what might be happening around them in the community. When reasons for opposing change, like rural addressing and E-911 service, are selfish the message to people in the community is to just do it their way (or move). One of Commissioner Dan Belshan’s first public acts was to question the need for rural addressing, and the result was more delays. However, the reasons for questioning the process related more to the costs of the change to be paid by taxpayers than to the potential benefit to the health and welfare of residents. As it has turned out, those first comments and questions gave us the first taste of the only gospel that particular commissioner seems to believe in – we can’t do that, it’s too expensive.

Quite frankly, I don’t understand the fears related to rural addressing. All I can see is the productive and efficient use of technology and a switch to real street names and house numbers. Both of those items bring rural residents of the county just a little bit closer to the level of emergency service currently available to residents of Albert Lea and the other towns and cities of the area. Many families with children and elderly couples live outside of urban areas in this county, because living in a town just isn’t an option. But whether we have to or want to, living in the country shouldn’t require us to submit to unnecessarily long response times to emergency calls, especially when we can do something to make things better.

I don’t plan on using 911, either now or in the future, and quicker response times won’t always be enough to save a life. But having an address that others can find in an emergency will create some peace of mind for me and my family. As far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the reasons I pay taxes.

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David Behling is a rural Albert Lea resident. His column appears Tuesdays.