Athens County
                 Cooperative Land Administration
                  and Information Mapping system

July 31, 2001

Athens County Commissioners
15 South Court Street, 2nd Floor
Athens, Ohio 45701

                           RE: Monthly GIS Progress Report
Commissioners:

In the February 2001 GIS Progress Report I asked for initial
input to our Core GIS mission and goals.  Improvements have been
made, and the statement and goals are presented again for
consideration and comment:

Core GIS Mission Statement:

        "Give our users what they want and need,
         keep it simple, and make it work."

Core GIS Goals:

 * Foster communication and support
 * Enforce security of data
 * Establish standards
 * Provide training for users
 * Manage outreach to new agencies
 * Transfer technology to users
 * Foster relationships, agreements, and partnerships
 * Manage Central Data Warehouse
 * Manage Internet and intranet access

Our Orthophotos Sub-committee met and finalized our consultant
selection process.  We discussed and approved the Request for
Qualifications and Scope of Work documents.  We have advertised
for Statements of Qualifications to be received
by August 3, 2001.

We plan to select the short list of qualified firms by
August 10th, receive technical proposals by August 31st, and
select the best firm by September 15th.  This schedule will
enable us to be under contract by October 1st.

Darren finished digitizing the Athens City Schools bus stops and
printed out two large maps (Elementary and Middle/High schools)
color-coded by school name with the number of students at each
stop.  He will wait until the bus drivers return in September to
get the existing route information, turnarounds, and transfer
points.

Our Athens County Library partnership grant application was
unsuccessful.  The Library remains interested in GIS and
plans to move in that direction soon.

Our GIS Steering Committee met:

ILGARD has completed parcel conversion for seven townships will
display them using the shapefile format on ArcIMS 3.1 software as
an expanded pilot project on our GIS website as soon as the 3.1
software is received.  The remaining township work is 90 % done
and work has begun on updating the parcel database with new
splits.  Darren Cohen has been hired fulltime with ILGARD and
will be spending half of his time on Athens County work.

Aaron Burk, GIS Coordinator for the Wayne National Forest Office
in Athens County discussed their GIS program.  They are hiring
two additional people to work in GIS.  They are preparing for
some new data conversion, and currently maintain 20+ layers of
GIS data.  They feel that their GIS will reach it's potential in
3 to 5 years.  Like our GIS, the Wayne is an ESRI shop.
I believe that all agencies operating in Athens County
are using ESRI software.

Tim Kern, O.U. Facilities Planning and Howard Fokes, O.U.
Facilities Management are working with the Army Corps of
Engineers, Hocking Conservancy District, Athens City, and Athens
County to develop floodplain strategies, update the FEMA 100 year
Floodplain maps, incorporate GIS functionality into the
University Master Plan, and standardize their "as-built" drawings
for use in GIS projects.  Jack Pepper is now working with Howard
on Facilities Management GIS projects.

Tim will research local utility companies to determine their GIS
implementation and their interest in our GIS work, and how we may
be able to help each other. Tim will report his findings at our
next meeting.

Athens County Auditor, Jill Thompson has a new person,
Mary Christman in charge of CAUV.  Later in the year, Darren will
work with Mary in developing a GIS project that will provide
excellent tools for her use in CAUV.

We will invite Chamber of Commerce, Development, and Real Estate
leaders to our next GIS Steering Committee meeting to show them
our work, gauge their interest, find out how we may be able to
help them, and how they may be able to help us help us.

Our next Steering Committee meeting is scheduled for
September 20th at 10:00 a.m. in the ILGARD conference room.

JB, Jill Thompson and members of her staff, and I will meet next
month to decide how to begin to incorporate the parcel splits
that have taken place during our parcel map data conversion
project.

Thank you for allowing me to coordinate this important aspect of
Athens County's future.
 
Archie Stanley - GIS Coordinator
555 East State Street - Athens, Ohio 45701
Phone (740) 593-5514
Fax (740) 592-4616
E-mail: astanley@frognet.net