Athens County
                 Cooperative Land Administration
                 and Information Mapping system
 
December 31, 2003
 
Athens County Commissioners
15 South Court Street, 2nd Floor
Athens, Ohio 45701
                                RE: Monthly GIS Progress Report
Commissioners:
 
I received your notice that my contract serving as Athens County
Sanitary Engineer / GIS Coordinator is terminated effective
March 31, 2004.  I will appropriately and gradually excuse
myself from those duties during that time period, and notify the
other stakeholders in Athens County's GIS that I will no longer
be coordinating GIS after March 31, 2004.  I will also
appropriately cancel further work on planning for a GIS
Addition, and ask our architect to place the plans in a final
archived form to protect our investment and submit a final
billing under his contract.
 
Ohio University, Department of Geography, Cartography Center has
completed scanning 60% of the old County Engineer Road
Centerline Survey Maps.  When completed this work will form a
valuable archive from the rapidly deteriorating paper maps.
 
County Engineer employees have recovered 24 Original One-Mile
Section Corner Monuments and have started locating the monuments
by precise Global Positioning System surveying techniques.
We plan to create a new GIS layer next year and add it to the
Data Warehouse Download Page on our ArcIMS website.
 
Our next GIS Steering Committee meeting will be
January 15th at 10:00 A.M., in the ILGARD conference room.
 
A year-end summary of progress made on our GIS during 2003 is
attached.
 
Thank you for allowing me to coordinate this important aspect of
Athens County's future through March 31, 2004.
 
Archie Stanley, GIS Coordinator
555 East State Street - Athens, Ohio 45701
Phone (740) 593-5514 - Fax (740) 592-4616
E-mail: 
astanley@AthensCountyGovernment.com
_________________________________________________
 
GIS work accomplished in 2003:
 
The Parcel Splits Maintenance System was continued and splits
were updated to 90%.  Pull-down menus were added that allow more
direct viewing of subdivisions.
 
The County Planner's Office began using the parcel data in
Natural Hazard Mitigation Planning.  The data is valuable in
processing losses due to disasters.  They also mapped buffer
areas for highway, sewer, and railroad easements in the Albany
area, which allow for analysis of potential commercial
development sites.
 
The Athens County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency
Management installed ESRI ArcView on their computer for GIS use.
 
We implemented the first stage of our Data Warehouse by adding a
page to our ArcIMS website for downloading of all our GIS data.
This increased accessibility of our extensive datasets has been
well received by users.
 
The Wayne National Forest Office completed their initial Surface
and Subsurface Ownership database.
 
The consultant developing the City of Nelsonville Comprehensive
Plan is using Athens County data extensively and is impressed
with the accuracy of the datasets.
 
ILGARD began work to develop a GIS website for the O.U. Office
of Facilities Management.  ILGARD also began potential GIS
operations with the Ohio EPA Air Quality Analysis Group and the
O.U. Office of Environmental Health.
 
The ten-county GIS grant obtained by Chuck Hammer, our Health
Department Administrator, completed the second year of
development.  ILGARD is assisting this comprehensive health care
initiative, which is unprecedented in the State.
 
We received all our new orthophoto and elevation contour data
from Sanborn Colorado.  This data is a vast upgrade over our
previous data and feedback has been tremendous from users.
ILGARD maintained our ArcIMS County GIS website and began a
major graphic update of the site.
 
ILGARD completed development of the automated Portable Document
File (PDF) based Section Map application for the County Auditor.
Planning continued to bring a GPS based real-time emergency
vehicle location capability to enhance our already excellent
E-911 operation.
 
ILGARD completed the parcel/data GIS search application in the
Auditor's Office.  Work began to develop a web page CAMA data
viewer.  The conversion to GIS is progressing well in the
Auditor's Office.
 
Our GIS Addition to the County Engineer's Office was postponed
due to delays in completion of the East State Street widening
project.  Potential conflicts between the two construction
projects were unavoidable.
 
ODNR completed work on our new Soils Layer.  This new layer was
paid for through a partnership among the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, the local office of the Soil and Water
Conservation, and the County Engineer's Office.
 
ODNR continued preparation work for a new land use map and data
list to be developed.  This map 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 arranged to have additional orthophoto and elevation contours
data sets developed along the northern boundary of Trimble
Township and the new Athens to Darwin U.S. 33 corridor.
ILGARD held ArcView training classes for several participants.
 
The County Engineer's Office continued a project with the Ohio
University Cartography Center to scan and catalog old Road
Survey maps.  This will create a valuable archive from the
rapidly deteriorating paper maps.  A second project will scan
our old property survey maps.
 
The Engineer's Office continued a project to locate our
countywide system of Section Corner Monuments by Global
Positioning methods.