Athens County
                    Cooperative Land Administration
                    and Information Mapping system
 
July 15, 2004
 
Athens County Commissioners
15 South Court Street
Athens, Ohio 45701
 
Commissioners:
 
The GIS Steering Committee met today:
 
We are beginning a GIS Technical User's Group.  The Group will meet on
alternating months beginning with the first meeting on August 19, 2004
at 10:00 a.m. in the ILGARD conference room.  JB and Jack Pepper will
co-chair the User's Group and I will report progress after each
meeting.  Please join us for these mutually interesting sessions.
 
We will receive our new GIS Website Server this month.  This is a
County server stationed at ILGARD until we have our own GIS Office.
This machine is dedicated the Athens County GIS ArcIMS Website and
should make the site operate more quickly.  Please let me know if you
notice a difference in the speed of the operation.
 
Once we have the new County Server on line, we plan to begin a
migration to ESRI SDE / SQL software and complete the migration by the
end of the year.
 
We will look into scanning old 1930s and 1950s Tax Plats and placing
the data on the historical plats page of the ArcIMS Website.
 
Jack Pepper is employed at the Athens County Health Department and is
working on several projects in General GIS Education, Homeland
Security, Mass Vaccinations, tracking sewage system performance, and
disease and infestation monitoring programs.
 
Tim reported that Facilities Planning is interested in migrating GIS
to the OU Regional Campuses.  ILGARD may offer GIS training tailored
to the needs of the Regional Campuses.  Tim is working on wetlands
mitigation and restoration near the OU Airport.
 
Scott is working with Ken and Noah correcting errors from the old plat
maps to the new digital plats.  Scott is also placing "Land Hooks" on
the new plats and has completed all but three townships.
 
Justin is working in Facilities Management on the Campus Database and
their internal ArcIMS website.  They acquired a new Trimble GPS
receiver that has real-time correction and sub-meter accuracy and are
using it with ArcPad.
 
JB is making progress on the new County Highway Map, and gave a
presentation on the new ArcIMS Website, and a new application using
360 degree photos of downtown places of interest, industrial sites,
etc. throughout the 29 County Appalachia Region.  Darren is doing
fieldwork for this project.
 
The new ArcGIS 9.0 includes new "Maplex" labeling techniques allowing
for labels to be automatically placed within parcels.  This new
concept will allow us to realize a long desired goal of making our
parcel data much more simplistically viewed by eliminating overlapping
property owner names.
 
Ric reported that the City of Athens has their ArcIMS Website on line
at www.ci.athens.oh.us.
 
Our next GIS Steering Committee meeting will be held
September 16, 2004 at 10:00 A.M. in the ILGARD conference room.
 
Sincerely,
 
Archie Stanley - GIS Coordinator
555 East State Street - Athens, Ohio 45701
Phone (740) 593-5514 - Fax (740) 592-4616
E-mail: 
astanley@AthensCountyGovernment.com