Athens County
                    Cooperative Land Administration
                    and Information Mapping system

December 31, 2000

Athens County Commissioners
15 South Court Street, 2nd Floor
Athens, Ohio 45701
                                  RE: Monthly GIS Progress Report
Commissioners:

J.B. Hoy provided an overview of GIS and our parcel conversion project
to employees of the Auditor's Office.  Jill Thompson, our County
Auditor is very interested in the capabilities that GIS presents to
her office.  She arranged for half of her office staff to attend the
briefing on one day, and the other half on the second day.  We
scheduled a day next month to go over several problems that have come
up in the parcel conversion process.

We signed a contract for the Architectural and Engineering design
of our GIS Management Facility to proceed over the coming year.
Construction of the addition is scheduled to begin in 2002.

Randy Mace, Doug Bentley, and I received a training update on our
Automated House Numbering System from Digital Information Systems.

I am planning to install ArcView software and precinct data for the
Board of Elections Office after the first of the year.  Also, our
County Treasurer, Javon Kittle Cooper has expressed interest in
beginning an ArcView GIS capability in her Office and Jill Thompson,
County Auditor has a new computer and is ready to begin working with
ArcView.

A summary of GIS work accomplished during 1999 follows:

GIS Success Factors quoted in the URISA Journal were applied to our
GIS and reported in our GIS monthly Progress Reports.  I believe that
we have positioned our GIS very well for successful implementation by
continuing to evaluate our user needs, hav ing long-term upper
management commitment to the project, sufficiently allocating
resources, planning for adequate staffing, providing timely and
sufficient training, having "GIS champions" who shepherd our project
from acquision to use, and ensuring organizational communication and
diffusion to smooth the transition to full utilization.

Our ILGARD parcel data line work conversion progressed and we have
now completed about 80% of the project.

We installed a new server and ArcIMS software to enable a new chapter
in our GIS Internet mapping application.

Planning is underway to bring a GPS based real-time emergency vehicle
location capability to enhance our already excellent E-911 operation.
We held a GIS show at the Ohio University Inn to showcase our
products.

Our contract was completed on our Automated House Numbering System and
E-911 Dispatcher On-screen Mapping System.  The dispatch mapping
application is operating flawlessly and the professional attitude of
the E-911 dispatchers in accepting and learning the new on-screen
mapping product has been outstanding.

We continued work to develop a County Intranet and to be networked
with the City of Athens, Ohio University, and others.

We completed an architectural/engineering preliminary plan for an
addition to the County Engineer Office that will include space for
a GIS Management Facility.

We began work on full architectural/engineering construction plans for
the Addition noted above.

Our County Planning Office initiated utility location projects for
the area within the Athens City Three Mile Limit and the villages
throughout the County.

Our County Health Department initiated several new GIS applications
and reported that GIS technology has doubled their Departmental
productivity.

Our new GIS web site utilizing ArcIMS software on a new server became
operational. We reserved "athensgis.net"  "athensgis.com"  and
"athensgis.org" as addresses for our GIS web site.

The U.S. government removed Selective Availability (SA) from the GPS
signal, instantly boosting GPS receiver accuracy by as much as ten
fold.

We partnered with our local Office of Soil & Water Conservation in a
50/50 funding venture to have much better soils data created for
Athens County by the ODNR and their Federal counterpart, over the
next two years.

We agreed to have ODNR create a new land use map and data list from a
new ODNR aerial photo flight.  By obligating to these things now, we
will get the data sooner.  This will help our local planning and CAUV
process, and will be used by several other agencies in addition to the
offices of Soil & Water Conservation, Planner, and Auditor.

We established a GIS data maintenance funding partnership beginning in
2002 of $10,000 each annually from the County Auditor, E-911, and
Engineer.  This fund will be placed as an escrow account to purchase
new orthophotos, topographic mapping, and other new data layers.

Our next GIS Steering Committee meeting is scheduled for January 18,
2000 at 10:00 a.m. in the Facilities Management conference room.

I attach an article about the advancing state of the art of GIS titled
"GIS Trends."

Thank you for allowing me to coordinate this important aspect of
Athens County's future, and for your usual cooperation.

Archie Stanley
GIS Coordinator
555 East State Street
Athens, Ohio 45701
Phone (740) 593-5514
Fax (740) 592-4616
E-mail: astanley@frognet.net