Guthrie County E911 Office
200 North 5th Street
Guthrie Center, IA 50115

Ph: (641) 747-8320
Fax: (641) 747-8916
envhlth@netins.net

Hrs: 8:00 to 4:30 (M-F)

Guthrie County Main > E911 Resources > Required Address Markers

Required Address Markers
January, 2006


Anyone living in the rural areas of Guthrie County, or anyone with a business or other actively used site, is required by County Ordinance to have an address marker that is uniform and provided by the County 911 system. This is pretty much a standard requirement if you drive around the State.

Guthrie County has chosen a flexible, composite blade that is blue in color. The four numbers of the ad-dress are placed on the sign using 4” high intensity reflective numbers. These signs were initially sold and installed in the mid-1990s. They have proven very durable as virtually all are still in place and in good condition.

The current charge for a marker is $25.00. When you have a new address, this sign is required. Addition-ally any time a sign is lost or damaged a new one is required. The signs are required to be placed in such a fashion that they are readable from EITHER direction as one travels down the roadway. They must be free standing and NOT attached to mailboxes, etc. They must be located on the same side as the dwelling, NOT on the other side of the road by the mail box.

When a new marker is needed at a new site or when a marker is lost or damaged, call this office and a new sign will be installed or the site will be measured for the marker, if it is a new location. The $25.00 is due in advance to avoid any problems with collection of the fee. Anyone failing to maintain a sign is subject to a fine.

This office will then put the numbers on a sign blade and install the sign for you. It takes a special driver to install these flexible markers. There is no further charge for the installation beyond the original $25.00. Whenever staff from this office notices a marker to be missing, this generates a letter to the owner to pay for another marker.

It is essential to keep up the sign system. Whether it is emergency ambulance/fire vehicles, deliveries such as UPS or FEDEX, or a friend coming to visit, the address numbers along the way let a person know if they are going in the right direction and when they have found the right address. If large numbers of markers were missing, it would make it much more difficult to know where you were.


Other sites of interest on this topic:

Road names
Maps
How Address Numbers Are Assigned
Guthrie County Ordinance #9