Polk County Partners With Balsam Lake And St. Croix Falls For Rural Addressing Project

POLK COUNTY -- Polk County will be working with the towns of Balsam Lake and St. Croix Falls as part of the ongoing rural addressing project.

This project will take inventory of existing signs, properties, and land use changes within towns participating in the project, and then evaluate addresses against the Polk County’s Rural Address Numbering System ordinance. If an address is found to be not in compliance with the purpose and intent of the ordinance, a conforming address will be issued by the county to replace the current one. After the inventory process is complete, the county will order and distribute any new address signs to the towns, who are responsible for their installation.

The rural addressing project, led by the Polk County Division of Zoning (DoZ), initially began in 2017, and has since evolved into a larger cooperative agreement between towns and the county.

The Polk County Board of Supervisors enacted Rural Address Numbering System Ordinance in 2019, after consideration of the public input received during a public hearing in 2018. This ordinance provides the county a framework to ensure an orderly and uniform addressing and road numbering system. Since then, Polk County has been working with its towns to provide them with updated signage to correct any nonconforming addresses.

There are a number of reasons why an address may be found to be nonconforming. The biggest the DoZ has found: alpha characters.

Numbered characters in rural addresses correspond to coordinates on an invisible grid that divides the county into blocks. Sometimes, a project will increase the number of addresses needed for an area—such as when a lot is subdivided—but there are not enough numbers to assign. In these cases, sometimes alpha characters like a, aa, etc., are assigned to differentiate reused address numbers.

The project aligns with a priority the County Board has held since 2020: increasing public safety. Maintaining an orderly and uniform addressing and road numbering system aids in timely and efficient responses of law enforcement and other emergency services, especially as the county and others begin to transition to the Next Generation 9-1-1 infrastructure.

If an address is found to be nonconforming, its owner will be sent a letter from the county informing them of the new address when it is issued.