By Matthew Barakat | mbarakat@alextimes.com
A fractional street address number in the city’s Beverley Hills neighborhood has sown division among its residents.
A family there says its 3600 ½ street number on Russell Road has caused a whole series of problems in terms of misdirected mail and deliveries.
Darien Tillinghast and his wife sought a new number from City Council. But by a four-sevenths majority, Council rejected the Tillinghasts’ request when their next-door neighbor protested the plan, which would have required them to change their number as well.
During two hours of presentation and debate at Council’s Oct. 17 meeting, the Tillinghasts and their neighbors, Mark Hughes and Susan Saffelle Hughes, made their respective cases to the Council. Friends and neighbors also chimed in with their opinions during public comments.
One speaker, Lucelle O’Flaherty, who opposed changing the numbers, chastised Council for letting itself get bogged down in the dispute.
“I’m not sure that the residents of Alexandria expect this body to be spending this much time on a first world problem,” she told Council. “This is not that big of a deal.”
In a phone interview after the hearing, Saffelle Hughes said she hopes Council’s vote ends the dispute.
“Losing my address would have been heartbreaking,” she said, noting that the home was built by her father in 1939.
Darien Tillinghast told Council that he and his wife have experienced persistent misdeliveries over the nearly 10 years they have lived in the home. He said they have tried to correct the issue with retailers providing deliveries to no avail, because many computer systems simply reject the “slash” sign that is part of their address.
He estimated that 10% to 20% of his packages are misdelivered.
“What reasonable course of action remains available to us?” he asked at the public hearing.
The Tillinghasts declined comment in an emailed response to the Times’ request for comment.
City staff recommended the change be made, with 3600 ½ changing to 3578 and 3600 changing to 3550. There is already a 3602, 3604 and 3606 on the road, so changing 3600 ½ to a whole number could not be accomplished without affecting at least one other neighbor.
The Tillinghasts’ request came under a new provision in the city code approved earlier this year allowing residents to request number changes and giving affected neighbors the opportunity to appeal. The new code was implemented on request from the Tillinghasts, according to city documents.
Before the new law was passed, city staff would work to renumber lots when residents made a request, but only if everyone affected agreed to the change, according to an April memo from the city’s Information Technology Services Applications Division Chief Steven Chozick.
Council members said they didn’t want the process for allowing street number changes to become a forum for wading into neighbor disputes. But documents submitted as part of the Council’s review process show a history of tension between the two families.
The Tillinghasts posted a large sign in front of their home delineating the various ways in which their street number might show up with verbiage saying “MISDELIVERED PACKAGES WILL NOT BE GIVEN TO US,” a message Saffelle Hughes termed as “snarky.”
In the Hughes’ formal appeal to the city opposing the number change, Saffelle Hughes said the Tillinghasts called the police after a delivery was mistakenly delivered to the Hughes home and destroyed when their dog accidentally got ahold of the groceries.
“This whole ordeal is more of an ‘un-neighborly’ situation than anything else,” she wrote in her formal appeal.
Half numbers are not uncommon in Alexandria. Paul Stoddard, the city’s director of planning and zoning, said during the Council meeting that 126 such numbers exist throughout the city, but only 17 of those are affixed to detached, single-family homes like the Tillinghasts’.
Vice Mayor Sarah Bagley proposed a compromise that would have labeled the Hughes property 3600A and Tillinghast property 3600B, but that was also rejected.
Mayor Alyia Gaskins, Bagley, and Councilors John Taylor Chapman and Jacinta Greene voted against the number change; Councilors Canek Aguirre, Abdel Enoubi and Sandy Marks voted to change the numbers.
The post Friction over fractions: Split Council rejects homeowner bid to renumber address appeared first on Alexandria Times.
