PROVO — County Commissioner Steve White says finding one's way around Utah Valley is often confusing at best and that it is time to sort out the address mess in Utah County.

White said it is a problem that will only get worse if officials continue to ignore it.

"We can do something now when we only have 400,000 people, or we can wait and try to do something later when we have who knows how many people — a million?" White told county mayors attending a recent Council of Governments meeting.

White noted Denver overhauled its address system in the 1970s and that it has made a vast improvement there.

"Before that, it was horrible," White said.

Street names now make sense and the numbering system is sequential — something even a newly arrived resident or a tourist can understand, a definite plus for a community, White said.

Finding one's way around America and Utah ought to be easy, White said, noting that Americans are modern folk, most of whom can read and write and for the most part generally speak the same language.

While White's proffered idea would likely prove very useful — especially for emergency service and law enforcement personnel, not to mention the mailman and the pizza delivery guy — the mayors in attendance were less than enthusiastic about offering an endorsement.

"What would be the cost? Where would the center of the universe be? Who gets to keep what they have while everybody else changes their street signs and all," said Orem Mayor Jerry Washburn.

White said Provo would naturally be the center point since it is the county seat. He thinks that is purely logical.

Washburn isn't so sure that's obvious, so there might be a fight right there.

Granted, Utah County has a lot of address quirks.

One is the diagonal course that State Street/ U.S. 89 — a major thoroughfare — takes as it passes through Orem. The angled passage puts some west-side streets suddenly on the east side.

And, there's the confusion created where the city boundaries between Lindon and Orem merge. A motorist driving east on a street with a south designation suddenly finds himself on a north designated street simply by crossing the boundary line.

Then there's the fun of trying to reach a south Orem location only to find you are now deep in the heart of Provo. Surprise!

And someone heading to Woodland Hills might find himself briefly but effectively in Salem — if only for a few feet.

Such scenarios can certainly be aggravating, and for those driving a firetruck or an ambulance, it can be costly in terms of time.

But it wouldn't be easy and it wouldn't be cheap — especially for homeowners with house numbers embedded in stone or on granite markers and cities that would be making mass changes in street signage.

Some businesses, like Nu Skin International, could lose trademark addresses like One Center Street.

It's a given that some mail would be lost during the transition — things like invitations to a 50th class reunion or wedding invitations that were sent based on old databases.

White said the idea is just food for thought.

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