Athens County
                 Cooperative Land Administration
                  and Information Mapping system
 
March 18, 2005
 
Athens County Commissioners
15 South Court Street
Athens, Ohio 45701
 
Commissioners:
 
JB, Darren, and I met with Paul Mara and Travis Anderson of Mara
and Associates in Logan in a mutual technical needs session.
Le-Ax Water District is a funding member of our GIS Steering
Committee and Mara and Associates do water line engineering
consulting for Le-Ax Water District.  We met to share information
between the work they do for Le-Ax and our GIS.  Much of the
Le-Ax System is in digital form.  The individual AutoCAD project
files need to be pieced together into an overall layer.  They are
using the most recent version of AutoCAD and it will input/out
GIS Shapefiles.  They use State Plane coordinates.  Mara would
like to have the data all in one layer with pipe and junction
attributes tied to the overall map.  ILGARD has the ability to do
this and have agreed to do it under our county contract.
Paul and Travis stated that they presently use our Internet
ArcIMS GIS data all the time.  Mara needs to be able to transfer
data between an overall layer and a software package they use for
planning purposes called "Pipe 2000".  It appears that this
software is built upon a Map Objects platform, and if so will be
interchangeable with our GIS.  Mara has used scanned images from
USGS Quad Maps as a background to digitized water networks on.
All "as-built" drawings are in AutoCAD.  Next we will meet at
ILGARD to go over our GIS capabilities as relates to Le-Ax, and
then later visit the Le-Ax Offices to go over the data they have
for the System as it relates to GIS.
 
JB, Darren, and I met with the Ohio University Cartography Center
to review the County Engineer Old Road Survey scanning project to
receive and provide input as to how the project will best be
incorporated into our GIS Web Site.
 
JB, Darren, and I met again with Paul Mara at the ILGARD
Facility.  ILGARD demonstrated our GIS and we discussed how we
can best offer technical assistance to the LeAx Water District.
 
The GIS Technical User's Committee met:  Mike Braasch, Ph.D.,
an Electrical Engineering Professor working in O.U. Avionics
presented GPS techniques and recent advancements in the system.
 
JB, Darren, and I met with Paul Mara, and John Collins and Roger
VanNest of LeAx regarding GIS technical assistance.  John will
send Billing data to JB.  Paul will send JB the LeAx water lines
they have digitized or scanned.  JB and Darren will study how to
best present the data for use by LeAx.
 
The GIS Steering Committee met:  Our County Highway Map is on
schedule for printing during May.  JB has discussed the LeAx
Water District technical assistance project with the LeAx Data
Consultant and no problems are anticipated.  JB and Darren
continue to work on our long-range software migration project to
an ArcSDE / Geo-database Enterprise GIS system.  ILGARD will
provide technical assistance to the County Planning Office by
developing an application to provide an area calculation
provision on our Parcel Layer for use by developers.
 
We provided analysis and maps to the County Commissioners for use
in lobbying for a large coal mine to be considered for location
in Athens County.
 
JB and Darren presented GIS concepts to the Federal Hocking
School Career Day.
 
We arranged for Sanborn Colorado to fly the new U.S. 33 highway
corridor, the new East State Street corridor, and two O.U.
tracts.  New orthophotos will be created for the 33 and E State
corridors and the two OU tracts, and elevation contours will be
developed for the 33 and E State corridors; and the new data
will be inserted into our existing orthophotos and elevation
contours layers as an update to our 2002 data layers.
 
Our next GIS Steering Committee meeting will be held May 19, 2005
at 10:00 A.M. in the ILGARD conference room.  Our next GIS User's
Committee meeting will be April 21, 2005 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