Local GIS Tidbits
You don’t see this too often: a candidate for local office (county commissioner) noting he’s worked with many GIS systems and feels the county should change its tools. Republican Lew Holland, after retiring from being an engineer at Whirlpool for 20 years, has been a real estate appraiser for the last eight years and is running for Marion County Commissioner in Ohio.
If he is elected auditor, one project he would want to tackle would be the geographic information systems already made available online.
As an appraiser, he’s used many GIS systems, and said there are many in other counties that load more quickly and are better overall systems. Union County has a system similar to Marion’s, and they are considering replacing it.
Holland wants to do the same.
“When Marion lags behind Morrow County, that’s a problem,” he said.
- Marion County GIS System
- Marrow County GIS
- Union County GIS
- Marion Star
Montville, CT is suing the state of Connecticut to prevent a new sex offender treatment facility from being added to a correctional facility in town. Why? The state used flowed data in determining where to put the facility.
Town officials took the data and, using local GIS mapping, concluded that the numbers were flawed. The state excluded several nonprofits, schools, childcare providers and other entities whose proximity to the facility should have been considered, they said.
The best data is local; it’s not clear what data the state used.
- The Day
Jackson, County, GA has a new emergency notification system that uses a database and GIS mapping software to send out messages to cell phones, e-mail addresses and land-line telephones in case of severe weather or other emergencies. The county automatically opted in all landlines (24,000) and about 1000 others have signed up for e-mail or cell phone notification. County population? 63,500 in 2009. Sounds to me like they should work harder on those cell phone notification signups!
The City of Saginaw, MI, singed up for its third three deal with the Saginaw Area Geographic Information System Authority, the agency that maps county property information for all sorts of applications. Cost: $126,738. Only three cities in the county do not use the Authority for GIS services.
- Mlive
