County changes address, road naming ordinance

EPHRATA — The Grant County Commission this week has approved changes to the county’s ordinance covering how streets in the county are named and how the addresses for homes and businesses are determined.

According to Connor Lange, an assistant planner for Grant County, the new ordinance doesn’t change very much, but instead clarifies a number of things the county needed to clarify.

“We updated the ordinance; it makes things clearer for how addresses in the county have evolved over the years,” Lange said. “The original ordinance was only a few pages long.”

While very little changes in the new ordinance, the revised measure is considerably longer, offering extensive and detailed legal definitions for things as diverse as what a road is and which real estate in the county can receive an address.

On county land outside the limits of incorporated towns and cities, Grant County is still divided intro four quadrants centered on the intersection of Baseline and Division southwest of Moses Lake. East-west roads will still receive number designations, and north-south roads letters.

Even-numbered addresses will still be situated on the north and west sides of roads, while odd numbers will be assigned to the south and east sides. And, in general, county roads will still be spaced a mile apart.

But the new ordinance goes into significantly more detail, denoting how actual addresses will be derived (the number of feet the primary driveway is from “the beginning of the square mile address block” divided by 5.28) and notes that “undeveloped property may also be assigned an address.”

The county also sets out rules for naming roads — no more than 16 letters, no more than two words, easy to pronounce and spell, nothing vulgar or suggestive, no duplicate names, nothing named after a commercial or private facility, and no indefinite articles (a, an, or the). The county reserves the right to change the name of a road “to improve public safety.”

The new ordinance also makes it the property owner’s responsibility to obtain an address from the county, and states that failure to obtain an address is “a public nuisance.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.