How Do I Get A 911 Address?

The GIS Department / Planning and Zoning Administrator is responsible for assigning new county rural addresses. New addresses are assigned when new driveways are installed, or when new construction warrants the addition of electricity to an existing site. New addresses are generally required prior to installation of electrical service to a site, and may be obtained when applying for a Building Permit or Ag Exemption. Call 712-792-1022.

Each rural address consist of five numbers which increase from North to South, and West to East. The numbers are a measurement including the Block Number which starts at the northern or western edge of the county and represents a mile i.e. the northern most mile is block 10 the next mile is block 11. The third digit is the tenth of a mile, the fourth digit is the hundredth of a mile, and the last digit is the thousandth of a mile and is either odd or even depending on which side of the road the address is located. Odd numbers are on the North and West sides of the road, and Even numbers are on the South and East sides of the road.

The Emergency Management Agency Director is responsible for making the blue rural address markers and arranging for them to be installed. She also makes replacement signs and arranges for new posts to be installed if necessary. Currently there is no charge for new or replacement signs. EMA Director can be reached at 712-792-2166.

Corner post and street names installations are done by the Secondary Roads Department. If you notice a damaged or missing street sign, contact the Secondary Roads Department at 712-792-3603.

Street re-naming requests should be forwarded to the Secondary Roads Department as well. Such a request would require approval of the County Board of Supervisors and integrated with the Communications Center and GIS Department.

Placement of address points in the Geographic Information System (GIS) and subsequently into the Global Positioning Systems (GPS) such as Google Maps, Garmin, Navteq, etc. are handled by the GIS Department. Periodically, the major GPS providers acquire address and street data from the counties, but also gather data from other sources. The county has no control of the data these GPS companies use, or the frequency of their updates. If you notice errors in how your GPS locates your address, you can call the County GIS Department to check that we have the data properly located, but we cannot control when the updates would be published to the GPS vendor.