PRESIDIO — At Monday night’s meeting, Presidio City Council voted in support of renaming several of the city’s streets as part of an ongoing project to make Presidio easier to navigate. The project — spearheaded by the Rio Grande Council of Governments (RioCOG) — will streamline addresses across town to remove misspelled and redundant street names.
The project has been discussed off and on at council meetings since December, when the plan was presented by RioCOG representatives with the ultimate goal of improving emergency response times in Presidio. For now, Presidio is difficult to navigate — not just for first responders new to town, but for everyone.
Many cities have “avenues” and “streets” that run parallel to each other, but Presidio has no consistent pattern. Some streets — like Porto Rico Street or Puerto Rico Street — are spelled differently block by block.
There are also no standardized numbered streets — there is a house in Presidio on the corner of First and 1st.
In April, a committee of first responders, city officials and community members unveiled a list of potential new street names. The committee came up with names that would reflect the local landscape and history and would be completely unique from street names in other towns in the Big Bend.
On Monday, Presidio City Council approved an official ordinance to adopt the new street name list, allowing the RioCOG to move forward with a door knocking campaign to reach out to people whose addresses would be affected by the switch.
Jesus Hermosillo, Presidio’s local RioCOG liaison, said that his team had had plenty of practice in 2020, when Presidio adopted official 911 addresses. He felt this work was an extension of the last project aimed at making streets more consistent — and ultimately safer. “We’ve really gotten it down to an art,” he said.
RioCOG will make every effort to contact folks living at the 215 addresses affected by the change. Sometimes visiting addresses multiple times was the key to success. “A lot of it is just walking the streets and making contact,” he said. “It’s got to be one-on-one.”
Councilmember Arian Velázquez-Ornelas reiterated her concerns that the address changes would impact Presidians’ insurance coverage, in the event that individual companies considered any change of address a move, regardless of whether or not it was mandated by local ordinance.
RioCOG Representative Kayse Muratori said that she was working to have property documentation ready for homeowners as soon as they were notified of the changes. “I want to have all of those ready and in place to go, whenever the day comes,” she said.