Breaking: City Council Formally Acknowledges That Street Renamed Last Thursday Now Has New Name, Subcommittee Confirms Old Name 'No Longer The Current Name And Has Not Been Since The Renaming'

MILLHAVEN — Following what city officials described as 'an uptick in resident confusion that was not administratively anticipated but was also not formally surprising,' the Millhaven City Council convened an emergency closed-door session Tuesday evening and emerged four hours later with a jointly authored memorandum confirming that Crestwood Avenue, which was officially renamed Equity Boulevard at 2:14 p.m. last Thursday during a regularly scheduled renaming ceremony, now has a different name than it had prior to the renaming.

The memo, which runs to eleven pages including appendices, concludes on page seven that the street's former name, Crestwood Avenue, 'is no longer the operative name of the street in question and has not been since approximately 2:14 p.m. on Thursday, the moment at which the renaming became effective and the prior name ceased to be current.'

'We want to be very clear,' said Deputy Director of Municipal Nomenclature Oversight Brenda Foss at a press briefing held in the lobby of City Hall, in front of a pull-up banner that read 'CLARITY IN PROGRESS.' 'The name that the street has now is the name it received during the renaming. The name it had before is the name it had before. These are two separate names, and they belong to two separate periods, one of which is the present and one of which is the past.'

When asked whether residents should now use the new name when referring to the street, Foss paused for approximately nine seconds before consulting a laminated card and confirming that yes, the new name was 'the recommended name for current use, going forward, in a temporal sense.'

The council retained independent nomenclature consultant Dr. Phillip Warby of the Greater Tri-Valley Institute for Applied Street Studies to assist with the determination. Dr. Warby, who billed the city $4,400 for seventeen hours of work described in his invoice as 'name transition analysis and legacy designation review,' told reporters that his findings were unambiguous.

'What we found, and this is backed by the documentation, is that the street now has the name it was given,' Dr. Warby said, nodding. 'Prior to being given that name, it had the other name. The renaming is, in our assessment, the mechanism by which the name changed. We feel confident in that characterization.'

The memo does not address what residents should do with pre-existing signage, stationery, or memories referencing the old name, though a footnote on page nine indicates that a follow-up subcommittee has been formed to 'explore the legacy name in a decommissioning context and determine whether any further acknowledgment of its retirement is warranted or merely optional.'

Councilmember Doug Pittman, who voted in favor of releasing the memo, confirmed that he had read portions of it and described the document as 'thorough in the places where it has content.'

The City of Millhaven will host a public information session on the renaming next Wednesday at the Millhaven Community Center, located on what officials confirmed is 'a different street, which has not been renamed at this time and therefore retains its existing name for the duration of its not having been renamed.'

Attendance is free. Parking validation is available upon request. The street is called Equity Boulevard now.