Athens County
                 Cooperative Land Administration
                  and Information Mapping system
 
January 16, 2008
 
Athens County Commissioners
15 South Court Street
Athens, Ohio 45701
                                   Re:  GIS Progress Report
Commissioners:
 
Our Enterprise GIS Steering Committee met:
 
I gave an update on the Location Based Response System (LBRS)
project.  The Engineer's office is applying for the grants from
ODOT and CEAO.  E-911 will arrange a memorandum of understanding,
issue bid specs, administer the vendor contract and maintain the
system.   Local funding will be met by E-911 and the Auditor's
Real Estate Assessment (REA) fund.
 
Bob reported working on annexations.
 
John reported on the Engineer Section monument project with HTC.
The current work is GPS location of section markers.
 
Dave gave an update on the LeAx GIS project.  They are geocoding
their customer database and checking for gaps in their customer
coverage areas.  A pilot project will digitize their "as-built"
water line drawings and the locations of non-mapped water lines.
A student is accompanying their maintenance people and locating
attributes by GPS methods.  Another student is doing research for
an application to provide efficient routing throughout their
network for maintenance workflow.
 
Howard reported that OU is working on their utility, ADA and
floodplain data.
 
Jill Harris is doing emergency planning for O.U. and wants to
learn more about how GIS can be used in her operation.
 
Ken and Ben reported that they are working on parcels and CAUV
coverages.  A new part-time person has been hired to assist their
efforts.
 
Paul is working with ILGARD to update the City of Athens water
and sewer lines and associated mapping.  He indicated they will
use interns for small mapping projects and ILGARD for their
larger projects.
 
I gave an update on three new GIS projects; Soil and Water
Conservation scanned archived photos covering several decades
being placed on-line; placing a GIS work station in the EOC for
custom mapping during disasters, and election precinct mapping
with new State data to be developed.
 
Census strategies as relates to Municipal Corporation boundaries
was discussed and Bob, Paul and Dave plan to meet with the
Auditor's Office to plan out the best way to proceed with
updating the corporation boundaries for each village and city.
 
I advised the Steering Committee that this may be my last
Steering Committee meeting.  I stated that the county
commissioners are considering taking GIS in a new direction and
as such have given me notice that my contract serving as Athens
County GIS Coordinator will be ended effective February 23, 2009.
I will plan to gradually excuse myself from those duties during
the remainder of that time period and notify the other
stakeholders in Athens County's GIS that I will no longer be
coordinating GIS after February 23, 2009.  I will deliver all
GIS software and authorization codes to your office.
 
A summary of GIS work accomplished in 2008 follows
on the next page.
 
Sincerely,
 
Archie Stanley - GIS Coordinator
16000 Canaanville Road - Athens, Ohio 45701
Phone (740) 593-5514 - Fax (740) 592-4616
E-mail: 
astanley@AthensCountyGovernment.com
___________________________________
 
GIS work accomplished in 2008:
 
Athens County agreed to participate in the State of Ohio
Location Based Response System (LBRS).  The Ohio Departments
of Transportation and Highway Safety, as well as the County
Engineer's Association of Ohio offer grants to assist in
developing the system.  The remainder of the cost will be paid
from the new E-911 Cell Phone surcharge and the Auditor's Real
Estate Assessment fund.  The County Engineer will apply for the
grants and the E-911 Office will write the bid specs, administer
the vendor contract, and maintain the data.
 
Planning was initiated to assist the Soil and Water Conservation
Agency in bringing their historic aerial photography that span
several decades online.
 
Assistance was arranged for ILGARD to offer training and
technical assistance to the E-911 Office as they transition to
the new ESRI ArcGIS version 9.3
 
We began planning for placing new election precinct maps to be
developed by ILGARD for the State of Ohio online.
 
Planning continued to bring a GPS based real-time emergency
vehicle location capability to enhance our already excellent
E-911 operation.  New radios and frequencies are operational,
and the old County Engineer frequency will be used as the vehicle
locater data transmission channel.  A Pilot Project was
implemented in the Athens County Engineer Department to
demonstrate this new technology.
 
The Engineer's Office continued a project to locate countywide
Section Corner Monuments by Global Positioning methods.
 
The State of Ohio Office of Information Technology, Ohio
Geographically Referenced Information Program (OGRIP) acquired
seamless statewide imagery for the Southern counties during the
Spring. The statewide orthophotography project acquired 1-foot
pixel resolution natural color digital orthophotography data for
the entire state, and Athens County received the new data in 2008.
 
Planning for updating municipal corporation maps was initiated to
prepare for new census data.
 
The Athens County Comprehensive Plan update continued.
Part of this project includes mapping which was finalized.
The maps were produced by ILGARD.
 
Ohio University implemented a campus-wide handicapped
accessibility map and utility mapping internal website.
 
The maps for the Maplewood Cemetery in Trimble Township were
scanned for possible future use in developing a Trimble Township
Cemetery Pilot Project.
 
ODNR and FEMA planned for a revision to the County flood plain
maps.  Our five feet elevation contour data will be used for the
majority of places with new maps available in 2009.
 
Hocking College planned for doing a GIS/GPS location of utility
poles in Nelsonville that will be used to show the probable
100 Year Flood elevation on the poles.
 
Athens City added new fire hydrant locations to their existing
fire hydrant data layer, mapped school districts, zoning updates,
and their Ash Tree Inventory.
 
LeAx Water District started development of an internal GIS.
LeAx plans to tie the GIS to a work order system.  LeAx will work
with GPS units and a "Thumper" locating system to trace their
lines for which they have no mapping.