St. Mary's Mapping Plan Sparks Privacy Concerns

St. Mary's County residents' objections have prompted local officials to postpone a planned county project that would update maps used by emergency and rescue workers with digital photographs of all the homes in the county.

Some homeowners said the photos would invade their privacy; others said allowing a contractor to snap the pictures would violate their property rights.

The photographs are intended to help fire and rescue crews and other emergency responders make sure they are at the right location. The St. Mary's County commissioners have delayed the project, which was to begin April 15, until they can review resident feedback.

On Tuesday evening, more than 100 people turned out for a public forum hosted by the commissioners.

The photo mapping project would cost about $436,000, funded by a grant from the 911 Numbers Board fund. If the county moves ahead with the project, it would hire a contractor to drive all the public streets in the county and collect an address, a photo and the geographic coordinates for each property.

The information would help rescue workers avoid confusion caused by out-of-sequence or unmapped addresses, multiple buildings on one parcel and addresses that have been entered incorrectly.

County Commissioner Thomas A. Mattingly Sr. (D-Leonardtown), a longtime volunteer firefighter, said the county is filled with rural roads that don't lead in logical directions, new housing developments and disorganized addresses. Maps are filled with "discrepancy after discrepancy," he said, which can waste time in emergency situations.

"If you are going down the road and your adrenaline is running . . . it's difficult to look at numbers on the mailboxes," he said. Mattingly added that the purpose of the program is to improve public safety, not spy on people or "out" them to the tax assessor for having extra buildings on their property.

But the data collection and its process worried some county residents. Some said they are concerned about how the photos might be used by the government or whether they will be posted on the Internet. Others said they did not want a contractor driving onto their private roads. And many questioned why so much money needed to be spent collecting this information when it could be obtained from other entities -- electric utilities, the Postal Service, tax assessors, the county building permit office or online aerial mapping programs.

Several speakers at the session, which lasted more than two hours, said the project would infringe on their privacy.

Roy Fedders of Dameron quoted the Fourth Amendment and told the commissioners they do not "overrule the Supreme Court of the United States."

Donald Knott suggested that, instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, the county use its "employees and computers and Web sites" to fix the problems with some addresses. Scott Freeman of Leonardtown agreed and said residents should be tasked with updating their own home location using the county's Web site.

But other residents said they don't want to be left out of the program because they live on private roads.

"I'm one of those people who lives down private roads," said Sandy Hut of Park Hall. "I think we also should be helped. . . . I don't have a mailbox, I don't have an address that can be seen. I want to be found."

Kathy Lewis, a Mechanicsville resident, is the 911 enhancement coordinator for Charles County and said digital photos are not necessary to update the maps. Lewis said she has been updating Charles maps for five years using just her laptop computer and is the only employee assigned to the task. So far she estimates that she has correct locations for 90 percent of properties.

The commissioners said they will continue to take comments on the issue for 10 days via e-mail and letters.