Athens County
                    Cooperative Land Administration
                    and Information Mapping system

March 31, 2001

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

Commissioners:

Our GIS Steering Committee set a goal to have new aerial photos flown
over Spring Break, 2002.  I have conducted research into the processes
that we can use to select a vendor and gathered information from other
agencies that have recently gone through the various processes.
I have studied the information, proposed a selection method to our
County Prosecutor, and hopefully will have a recommendation at our
May GIS Steering Committee meeting.

I spoke with Chuck Canter, a local Professional Surveyor about
providing any necessary GPS work associated with our aerial
photography project.  He is very interested in being part of the
project.

Aaron Burk is the new GIS Coordinator for the Wayne National Forest.
Aaron is excited about what we are doing in GIS and is willing to
share their information with us.  I invited him to attend our next GIS
Steering Committee meeting, he has agreed to attend, and will provide
the Committee an overview of the Wayne's GIS program.

I presented our GIS to the Meigs County Rotary Club.  They expressed a
great deal of interest in GIS.  Gene Tripplett, the Meigs County
Engineer invited me and we also had a good discussion after the
meeting about how our Athens County GIS is structured.

J.B. Hoy is working to schedule an ArcView training class to be held
at ILGARD.  Professor Lin from Cincinnati will instruct the two-day
class probably in May or June.  We will be able to accommodate 20
people.  A notice will be promptly posted once we have the particulars
nailed down, and we will honor requests on a first come-first served
basis.

Our GIS Steering Committee met:

Leroy Scribner, from O.U. Environmental Health & Safety attended the
meeting and we welcome him to our group.

John Kotowski has a new staff civil engineer, Tim Kern who will be
involved with GIS and mapping.  Facilities Planning is currently
working on Floodplain issues with ODNR.

Ken Highland is prepared to take initial ESRI training this year in
preparation of additional training once ArcInfo 8.2 and the new
ArcParcel template ship in late 2002.

Sherwood Wilson reported that Facilities Management is finishing up
their floodplain work and updating their data layers.

J.B. Hoy reported that all line work is completed for our parcel
conversion project and they are currently attributing parcel
identification numbers and other parcel information.  The initial
steps to begin updating the parcel splits work will begin soon.
Our GIS website will have at least half of our townships parcel data
posted by May of this year.

Jill Thompson indicated that she would like to have several of her
staff members trained in ArcView GIS.  We will begin to set up a
two-day ESRI ArcView class at ILGARD.

We discussed methods to use in acquiring orthophotography next year.
I will contact Ralph Six, in O.U. Purchasing regarding the RFP process
used by Ohio University.   We will spread the project over three years
to ease funding on everyone.  We hope to be able to acquire new
topography as part of the project.  We also discussed needs for color
photography.  We formed a sub-committee (Jill Thompson, Howard Fokes,
J.B. Hoy, Tim Kern, and myself) to approve and conduct the consultant
selection process.  Anyone interested in serving on this sub-committee
please let me know.

Our next GIS Steering Committee meeting is scheduled for
May 17, 2001 at 10:00 a.m. in the ILGARD conference room.

I attach two articles regarding mobile GIS.  GIS Takes the Field
provides an update in the state of the art, and Inventory Made Simple
with ArcPad describes a Southern California Water District project to
locate and attribute fire hydrants.

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