MINUTES OF THE GIS POLICY COMMITTEE MEETING:
DECEMBER 21, 2004
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chairperson Dan Swartzendruber called the GIS Policy Committee to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 2:35 p.m. Johnson County Elected Officials, Department Heads, and Staff present were: Carol Thompson, Jean Schultz, Tom Slockett, Dan Swartzendruber, Jeff Huff, Kim Painter, Jeff Horne, Gary Yoder, Rick Havel, Bill Greazel, Ralph Wilmoth, Mark Kistler, Sally Stutsman, Tom Kriz, Rick Dvorak, Andy Chappell, Dennis Baldridge, Tom Brase, and Steve Spenler.
DISTRIBUTION OF TRANSCRIBED MINUTES FROM OCTOBER 20, 2004 TAT
Assistant Planner Dan Swartzendruber: I would like to say before we get started that we have a couple of different presentations of different parcel maintenance plans on the agenda, number five. When we get to that point in the agenda I would like to limit our time somewhat to fifteen or twenty minutes per presentation. Hopefully that will be enough. Also, in the interest of time so that we can get out of here by 4:00 or 4:30 it would be a good idea to try not to be redundant and keep our comments to salient points and not repeat ourselves. So if we could try to do that that would be great. Second item on the agenda is distribution of the transcribed minutes. I did send out an email earlier so hopefully you all got that. I do have four or five copies if someone needs them.
Swartzendruber: The next item will be a presentation from the County Auditor regarding the parcel maintenance history and update of parcel maintenance to be completed.
Deputy Auditor Mark Kistler: Who needs the handouts from us? We did a timeline. The proposal is later in the agenda so we’ll go to the handouts that are behind our executive summary that we handed out. We did a timeline covering some of the events in the parcel maintenance. We are going to discuss some of these as part of the proposal in the executive summary. We’ll hit some of the high points on some of that as we go through that. I think I’ll combine that with the proposal. One of the questions was how far behind are we? I took some of the data that we can generate from the parcel maintenance tracking that Information Services provided, exported those reports to spreadsheets and then we went through and put in dates that work was completed so we could give you a summary of where we’re at as far as what work has been done in Invision, the real estate database, and what work has been done in ARCInfo. You’ll see there is a great deal of work for 2003 and 2004. It is broken down, the magenta, on the color copy, or the bar at the top represents where it is pending in both databases which also would include a large number of plats of survey that are not split until there is a deed recorded. If we do change the workflow to do everything as soon as it is recorded that would be a change in procedure to how we and the Assessors have dealt with plats of survey that no deed is recorded. Below that you’ll see bands that are in blue, or the second set of bands down, you’ll see that the ARCInfo is pending. There is quite a bit of work to do in ARCInfo and the Invision is done. Those have been split in real estate. The next set of bands you see, the Invision is pending and the traverse is done. The band below that...
County Auditor Tom Slockett: Why don’t you explain the traverse?
Kistler: The band below that, the green band or the second large band from the bottom of the bands that indicate where the errors are, those also have the traverse done. The traverse is where a mapper will take a survey, plat a survey subdivision plat and enter all the distance and bearings off of that plat into basically a spreadsheet. From that our full time map delineator can take that information; it actually creates a drawing of all the lines and arcs in that plat from the information that has been input. It will also create the dimensions on those lot lines. There is quite a bit of work after that cleaning up the dimensions, they don’t always go on neatly and cleanly so there is a lot of editing with that. You have to rotate the subdivisions and plats into place and that’s where they go into a parcel temp layer that we will be talking about. Eventually when adjustments are made around it, because you do not want to warp your new information that you very carefully entered the exact distances and bearings in, you do not want to warp that information so that’s why it goes in this parcel temp layer. Then we need to go back in and readjust parcels that fit around it because a lot of those property lines could be just simply digitized off of an aerial photograph. We don’t want to fit that good information to the other information that may have a fairly large margin of error. Those two bands, the green and the orange represent a lot of the work that the part time map delineators have been working on that we have had the last ten months. We can discuss any questions you have about that, or move on.
Planning and Zoning Administrator Rick Dvorak: Mark, if I understood correctly the subdivisions that are recorded, lines are not done until a parcel is sold?
Kistler: Subdivision plats generally are done right away in Invision. It’s the plats of survey that a lot of times people for one reason or another decide that they are going to divide property and they don’t follow through so we generally wait until there is an actual deed on those. We can change that. That is something we’ll have to discuss when we finalize any changes in the workflow. Traditionally those parcels are not split until later. That is also something that you see a little bit of work from 2001-2002. There are plats of survey in those years that there were no deeds. We can also set a time limit well, if we still haven’t seen deed in so many years, we can go ahead and split that. We may just want to go ahead and do everything within two weeks regardless of whether there is a deed or not. Then that doesn’t become an issue. That is certainly open for discussion.
Dvorak: So the top maroon or whatever that color is, those are subdivisions?
Kistler: Those are subdivisions, plats of survey, or right-of-way acquisition plats, any recorded plat. Those are the ones that we’re basing the amount of time it takes based on the recording date. Each of these bars is a grouping by the recording date. We may even in 2002 have a ‘99 plat of survey if we issued the survey number in ‘99 but then waited three years to record the plat it would be 2002. The other one I gave you, those are ones that are separated because we have historical data on the plats. We’ve tracked that information for a number of years. You can see the tremendous increase in the workflow based on plats. We’re looking at up to 400 tasks at the peak in 2002. That was a tremendous increase over the 200 to 250 plats that we’ve had for a number of years. We had the historical data for this. The second sheet are the tasks that we do splits and combines in GIS that we don’t have that kind of historical data. This is just what has been entered into the tracking system beginning with when it was initiated in November of 2002. We have annexations, buildings on leased land, condo amendments and declarations, general modifications that can be anything that needs to be changed like adding a cell tower, a correction from a conversion error, or someone finds and error in something that was done years ago or recently. General conversions can be any kind of change that are outside the mainstream. If someone sees something that needs some modification those would get put in. Those are fairly simple, easy to do changes. A lot of times it is as simple as changing some annotation, some text on a map. Right-of-way easements are easements that we don’t have recorded plats on. The splits and combines with no plats, that’s where an owner requests two lots are combined or may have had lots combined in the past and wants them split back out, that kind of thing, where we don’t have a new recorded document. Those indicate what has been completed in the GIS tracking since it was initiated in 2002 for those tasks that aren’t recorded plats. Any more questions? OK, we’ll talk about the timeline in relationship to the proposal when we come back if you want to go to the next item on the agenda?
Swartzendruber: So are you done?
Kistler: Yes.
Swartzendruber: The next item is discussion/action of a $500 annual funding commitment from Johnson County to the recently created Central GIS Data Repository. Rick Havel.
GIS Coordinator Rick Havel: Over the last year there has been movement to develop a central depository to hold certain layers of GIS information that is valuable across county boundaries, especially like the center line file, potentially parcel database although that hasn’t been discussed. There’s several layers. Wayne Chezik has kind of chaired this movement. This committee that was set up to produce this applied for a grant and received that grant from the Iowa Innovation Fund for about $89,000 to get the projects started, to allocate some funds, to get a server put in place, and get some personnel time devoted to that which will probably be housed in Marshall County, Iowa. It would be a server that would supply information out to emergency response personnel, especially emergency management personnel to store this information and distribute it. To keep the thing going over several years they asked for a certain level of monetary commitment by members of the repository. I suggested $500 annually to help fund it because it is to help keep this going on down the road. That is the proposal, any questions in regard to that?
County Treasurer Tom Kriz: How many are involved in it?
Havel: That is a good question. I think a lot of the big counties that have GIS based data at this time, Marshal County, Linn County, Black Hawk County. I don’t know for sure but I can get that number. At this point in time they are looking for letters of support to see if they even want to continue it, before they even build this thing and then have to scramble to find funds to keep it going. At this point they have the grant money approved and they are looking at letters of commitment. So, worst case scenario if they don’t get enough funding to keep it going it probably will get scraped.
County Assessor Bill Greazel: Is your recommendation that we do it?
Havel: My recommendation is that we do this.
Greazel: I’ll make a motion.
Swartzendruber: Is there a second?
Kriz: I second that
Swartzendruber: All those in favor?
Group: Aye
Swartzendruber: Those opposed?
Swartzendruber: OK, next item is discussion/action parcel maintenance and management plan. There are two plans being proposed, one from County Auditor’s Staff and one from Supervisors Thompson and Stutsman. Please limit to fifteen minutes in a presentation. With that I’ll turn it over to Mark Kistler.
Kistler: I’d have to say that we were a little surprised following the Technical Advisory Team Meeting of October 20th. At that meeting there was a motion to look into hiring an outside vendor to help catch up on the parcel maintenance, to also look at hiring a full time position in GIS which would help Rick support other offices’ work, but initially also aid in the backlog of work, and to look at a full time position for the Auditor’s Office. So, when we saw Supervisors Stutsman’s and Thompson’s proposal it came as a surprise that we now were looking at a proposal for three positions in Information Services. That proposal does not take into account the statutory responsibility for County Auditors. There’s no reason to fund GIS in Information Services if funding could be brought to bear to do the work in the Auditor’s Office that should be done there. In recognizing that we need to continue to cooperate with the GIS Coordinator and do what we can to continue our good working relationship and get this work done, we would like to propose that we do recommend this position in the Auditor’s Office to keep this kept up on a date forward basis and do the steps that we talked about to deal with the backlog of work to support an additional position or positions whatever the Board would decide for GIS and hire the outside contractor to help us keep up with the work. Also, included in that is a proposal to work with the Facilities Director and the Space Needs Committee to come up with a quite space adjacent to the Auditor’s Office for GIS work or to add partitions in the Auditor’s Office to create a quieter work space. Some of the accomplishments that we wanted to cover in dealing with mapping and parcel maintenance, currently the parcel count, as of December 17, for parcels in the GIS database is 53,573 parcels compared with 53,040 parcels in the Real Estate database so there is actually more in GIS. Out of that count on the 17th, there were 1,380 parcels in the parcel temp layer, those are the ones that have been adjusted into place and there’s still adjustment around those parcels that needs to be done. One thing we want to see happen is the GPS work that Rick has discussed, to nail down some of these section corners that in many cases were just digitized off an aerial photographs, so that we don’t start warping a lot of parcels unnecessarily to a location where they shouldn’t be, but base those on accurate section corners. Incidentally that number actually jumped when I ran the report today there were 1,582 now in parcel temp. That is roughly a 95% match, but since the numbers are so similar it is not necessarily a factor of parcels being split in Invision and not being split in the GIS database. There’s also a lot of parcels out there that are in GIS but aren’t in Invision. There’s a large number of tax exempt parcels that we mapped in the mapping project and when we discussed it with the Assessors a decision was made not to create database records for those at that time so that is something that does need to happen. It’s a fairly simple fix, polygons are there, the parcel numbers are there, it’s a simple matter of adding a blank database record, which, I did start Salvador on. But it is a lengthy project so it was decided to take him off that and have him work on parcel maintenance instead. That is still a project we need to tackle. We are at over 53,000 parcels now, that’s above the number we counted when the GIS conversion work plan was done by Farragut in March of 2001. At that point there were 46,900 parcels. At the point we did the mapping project starting in 1993 there were 38,000 parcels. By the end of that project there were 40,709. It jumped up to 46,900 and now 53,500.
Slockett: Do you want me to hold that for you?
Stutsman: I was going to say should we get that eraser board?
Slockett: Also, there’s a timeline in your materials that looks like this. This is kind of busy.
Kistler: In the time from when the conversion work plan was set to the present we have had an increase from 46,000 to 53,000. In the last year in 2004, we’ve had a conversion to GEMs Software, we’ve had a conversion in the Office to Invision which has been a very difficult conversion. And, we’ve had a record early voting in the general election. Our personnel have since we did the conversion in 2002 to the GIS which actually began in October of 2001. We did the last maintenance on our AutoCAD maps in May of 2001. During the summer there was a pilot project and they began the conversion on the data in four phases starting delivery in October of 2001 with the final delivery, if they were on time, it was March of 2002. It was in May of 2002 that in a meeting of Rick, Jean, Tom, Brian, and Jeff from Farragut, a decision was reached that the proper maintenance procedure would be to use parcel editor software. It was in the summer of 2002 that steps were taken to start putting together the software and the procedures to do the maintenance. All of the parcels that were recorded in that time frame when we were in this peak of activity had to be maintained once we got a system up and running and we’ve continued since that time to work with Rick. I don’t want this to be a criticism when I talk about all the changes Rick has put us through, because every time he’s made a change in the system he’s made a great improvement either for maintenance of the system or for the presentation of the information to the users. But, every time there was a change in the software and the procedures we’ve adapted to that.
Slockett: I even put it a little differently. We agreed with it or we wouldn’t have done it. We have been very supportive and cooperative of every proposal and change he has suggested.
Kistler: Initially we started out doing parcel editor and working up those procedures in 2002. In 2003 there was training for the personnel we had in 2002, then when John started in March of 2003 we scheduled training. That was held in September of 2003. Fortunately or unfortunately by the end of 2003 we left parcel editor because parcel editor is a software partner of ESRI and it works on top of the ARCinfo software.
Slockett: Is a different company NovaLIS.
Kistler: Yes, it was a different company that was a partner that developed the software to do the maintenance. ESRI saw that there was a market there and they developed their own tools to do the same kind of functions. So, rather than have the County go to the expense of paying for this additional software so we could stay in our comfort zone, Rick discontinued the parcel editor and switched us to ARCInfo once we had an upgrade that had a lot of the tools that allow us to do these traverses and some of the procedures that we have talked about. So, it was saving the money on software costs every year but it was a major change. They couldn’t just steal the look and exact functionality of the software. It had to have its own look and feel so our personnel had to in the last winter learn new processes and procedures. There was a month a year ago at this time that we were off the system. There were extensive changes not only in the software we’re using to do the maintenance, but the actual way the data was stored. The data that Farragut gave us back in 2002 was stored in what is called the coverage files in tiles by section. That is not a very efficient way to present the data to the users so Information Services set it up to take that data and export it on a nightly basis into this SDE format which is very efficient. It just created another layer of technical problems that could occur because of having to move this data all the time that they could eliminate and also simplify our maintenance procedures because Rick and the IS staff were able to combine all this data instead of these separate tiles which we had a lot of technical problems when we’re crossing tiles getting the data updated. They combined that right in SDE, simplified the data as far as having to process data. We went to initially using personal geodatabases last fall and in the interim period where they were working out that transition which was something else we had to learn. But, it was really a temporary measure, we’ve discontinued that and went to versioning, which is a very nice system where you are actually working on basically a copy of the actual county wide map so you aren’t crossing all these tile boundaries and all that. So, there were a lot of major changes that we had to adapt to. We had to do retraining for new procedures, but we’ve adapted because every one was an improvement. Some of the other thing I want to talk to you about are more recent vintage. We’ve talked about staffing problems. I do want to point out one thing on this, we did, recognizing the need for full time staff that could develop the expertise to work on this day in and day out and retain staff we did request two full time positions in December of 99 for FY01. This was before the conversion. We got one position, we took the Account Clerk II because we only had one and we had two and one half map delineators. We definitely needed that Account Clerk II. For FY 02 we asked for a Deputy Auditor for mapping and GIS so we would have a person full time focused on doing this GIS maintenance and that’s solely what that Deputy would be working on. That request was turned down as was the request for a full time Deputy in December of ‘01, the request for a full time Deputy was turned down in December of ‘02, and again in December of ‘03 that request for a full time deputy was turned down. So, we have asked for a full time position five years running to work on GIS maintenance and have been turned down. Last year, in lieu of getting the full time position we asked for part time hours to be added. We requested 30 hours to help with GIS work and 20 hours to help with Real Estate and to assist the public with GIS requests. The Board did grant us that. It was worth a try, but for this highly technical type of work we’ve had mixed success because of turnover. We’ve had some very good people, Rick is familiar with them, like Adam, Zeb, now Andrew, Martin was a whiz at doing the plats. Unfortunately in the ten month period that we’ve had those additional hours we’ve hired six new part time map delineators, three in February and three in May. Five have left employment with the Auditor’s Office. Two didn’t make it into grad school, one decided to take a full time job on graduation, one took an internship in New Mexico, and one decided his school load was too heavy. What we have done with those positions is when we got them we put our most experienced people on GIS maintenance helping John McKiness so they would initially start out doing QA/QC work. He would train them to do COGO, those traverses we were talking about entering the distance and bearing of each lot so that they would create the base data that he would them be able to put into the maps. He started to do some very simple other drawing tools with Adam before he left. He’s at the point with Andrew, who’s the latest who was one of the people who gained experience and was moved over as he showed ability to do good GIS work, he’s starting to learn some of the simple tools. So, if they’re here long enough they do start to be productive. That has been a problem due to the turn over. We have lost three of those more experienced people that we were relying on to assist John in that ten-month period. During this time we went through a conversion into Invision from the HP Real Estate Software that we had. That didn’t go very easily. We’ve had a lot of problems. We particularly had a lot of problems with the transfer book application where we transferred property on a daily basis. That problem kept cropping up, it was losing a lot of the entry of information that we would enter into the system, would completely blank out when we would go back to update it. That happened off and on from March through the summer. The last time it happened it began in late September again and it was well into November before the programmers at Invision figured out what the problem was. They think they have it solved. I’m thinking they probably do have it solved, I think the folks in IS might feel they finally have a grasp of it. I don’t know what you feel but there were major problems that just weren’t getting solved. They would fix the symptom, help us fix the data, but they were never figuring out what the root problem was. I think they finally did square that away. On action taken I’ve talked about the five requests for full time help that we have made and the part time requests that we’ve used for the last ten months. What we would propose is what we need is a full time permanent position. We need some stability and someone who is going to learn the tools to do all of the levels of work that John McKiness currently does. So, we would like to add that full time position in the Auditor’s Office to deal with the day forward maintenance and whose duties would focus solely on GIS, particularly concentrating on the steps such as fitting completed subdivision parcels into the seamless map base which does take a little more expertise. We would like to ask you to maintain the part time temporary positions that you’ve given us until that bug is eliminated, if an outside vendor is hired, that the QA/QC of that conversion is done and all corrections have been made, and also to correct some of the problems that have been found in the work that was converted from CAD to GIS by a vendor. Remember Rechtfertig Subdivision down in Sharon Township that we were looking at a couple of weeks ago? It’s a subdivision that was in the CAD, we’d drawn it. Dan was wondering why it wasn’t in the GIS. Well, it was there when we sent it to be converted, they just somehow didn’t get those parcel lines incorporated. It’s in our notebooks of QA/QC that need to be dealt with. So, as part of getting all the backlog caught up we need to finally address that problem. The funding was done to do that QA/QC by part time people in our office but we never got any follow up on dealing with those problems. That is something we have had to deal with as we do maintenance. We are aware of a problem like this subdivision where we’re doing new maintenance we’ll deal with that issue at the same time. We would like to work with Rick any way we can to help him in hiring an outside vendor to help us with backlog. I think some of the information that I’ve gone through reviewing the spreadsheets where John tracks the work as far as what we have traverses of already so that we can get some solid numbers before any proposals. I think we can help them with that. Workspace, there has been discussion that the large open that we have with all of the other activity is not a conducive space for GIS work. We would like to work with the Facilities Director and the Space Needs Committee to find a quiet space next to our office or add partitions. We certainly would support anything that GIS staff in other departments want to do and any staff needs that are sent to the Board. So the benefits of this, the advantages of adding the map delineators in the Auditor’s Office are it allows the Auditor to meet the statutory plat mapping requirements for County Auditors. There will be increased efficiency of parcel maintenance work and QA/QC for GIS mapping by individuals working in close proximity instead of having to run to another location every time they want to discuss the work they’re doing. There will also be increased efficiency due to face to face communication between individuals doing the real estate system maintenance and the parcel mapping maintenance. Placing the new position in the Auditor’s Office would be under me. I have 16 years experience in mapping. They would be working with the County’s most experienced map delineator in John. Hopefully now that John has gained a lot of experience we won’t have to lean on Rick too much to be coming downstairs and assisting people in the learning process. As far as the eight goals that were listed in the Stutsman-Thompson memo, they’re all laudable goals. We certainly support seeing all of those accomplished except we would like to see number five, the GIS database, be the primary work focus for new Auditor’s Office staff. As far as updating addresses goes, we certainly appreciate all of the work the City Assessor has done in entering parcel addresses. I don’t think any GIS staffing necessarily addresses that. We certainly would agree that if we had the staffing to do that if they want to pass that task we would certainly be willing to look at that. Anything you want to add?
Slockett: I think you should mention something about the addresses for the Treasurer.
Kistler: As far as the addresses for the Treasurer, we did all of that splits that our office and the Assessor had ready through the end of June. We entered all of the addresses, routine address changes that were brought over to us through the end of June. We updated all of the deeds that were recorded through the end of June. So if there were problems with addresses, either the person who owned it sold it, which isn’t a likely scenario because I don’t think a lot of the subdividers and developers are going to suddenly close their doors so that bill is still going to get delivered. I think I would look strongly at the type of conversion error we had with the parcel addresses. The City Assessor had to have Invision rebuild the parcel address portion of the database because there were some serious errors in how that was converted.
Slockett: The point is that we had entered and all of the addresses were up to date on June 30 in the Auditor’s Office. We are behind in the GIS development and nobody has been trying longer to call attention to that and to get resources to do something about it. We desperately want to get caught up as much as everyone else wants to or more. I think we might be mixing apples and oranges. We were not behind in entering the addresses. Jean you look like you’re looking skeptical.
Information Services Director Jean Schultz: Correct me if I’m wrong Gary, I think some of it was they had to redo the parcel address, not necessarily the mailing address.
Kistler: Right, but why did we suddenly have addresses that weren’t working. Something had to happen. I doubt if the previous owner, if something got updated, that bill still should have gone to somebody. If they’re getting returned…
Swartzendruber: Mark, I hate to interrupt you but I think we’re getting off task here.
Slockett: We are getting off task.
Kistler: The point is that is a problem that really isn’t related to GIS. I think there is some other cause there, it’s something we do need to address, but the work we need to get done for GIS really does not impact the mailing of those tax bills is the point.
Swartzendruber: Would anybody have any other questions of Mark before we move on? OK, the next item will be a proposal from Supervisors Thompson and Stutsman referencing the memo of December 9.
Thompson: You’ve all had a copy of the memo. The overriding principle organizationally that we tried to address here was that work that’s being used by the whole County, by more than one department in the County should be done in an office that serves the whole County. The Auditor’s Office has an emergency when an election comes up and has to pull staff off things. That wouldn’t happen in the IS department because they have the same responsibility to one office as they do to all of the others. There is no overriding goal in their office that has to be met on a regular basis. It’s not just the Auditor’s Office, this would happen in any elected official’s office. If GIS were in the Treasurer’s Office and they had to get tax bills out they would certainly do the tax bills first. That’s what they’re supposed to do. But the principle for an organization is that work that has to be used by more than one division should be created by an entity that is equally beholden to all of the divisions. The other thing that we tried to address in our memo is a crisis of competence in the Auditor’s Office. I’ve been on the Board for six years. For three years I listened to many reasons why the polygons could not be completed and for the last three years I listened to many reasons why we are behind on the mapping. But the fact is that regardless of what the excuses are, things don’t get done. Prior to December 2002, that’s two years ago when I was on the predecessor to this Committee we asked for a proposal from the Auditor’s Office for what it would take to get this done. As far as I know one never was forthcoming. So what we have is years of performance that doesn’t measure up, that causes problems to the Assessor, causes problems to the Treasurer. It’s an embarrassment to the whole County when the work doesn’t get done and we didn’t see any way to solve that other than by putting it in a department where their work is for the whole County. That’s the bottom line for us. Do you want to add something? I didn’t go into the…
Stutsman: I don’t know if we need to go into the details of it. I think that everybody has a chance to… Unless somebody has some specific questions.
Swartzendruber: Does anybody else have anything to add?
Slockett: Are we going to have any discussion about it?
Greazel: The only discussion I would have would be that it was a great presentation Mark and it brings us up to date on why we are where we are at, and I think it makes it very clear. It’s useful to have a good explanation of why we’re at where we’re at but as far as what the answer is to that, that you can do internally, I hear that the only answer is more funding, more resources from the Supervisors.
Kistler: Which is the same proposal that they’re promoting, more funding for the positions to get the work done.
Greazel: What I’m saying is that’s been the answer for several years and it hasn’t worked. I’m looking for a different answer.
Kistler: We haven’t gotten the fulltime positions.
Greazel: For whatever the reasons. I’m not going to take sides on that issue. I’m just saying that has been your answer for several years and it hasn’t been the right answer.
Kistler: It hasn’t been addressed. We haven’t got the funding.
Greazel: I won’t dispute that.
Kistler: OK.
Greazel: I’m looking for a different answer than the answer that it hasn’t work for several years. I’m willing to try something different, that’s my reason.
Stutsman: I think that part that enters into this too is that the management of those positions. It’s one thing to fund them but then being able to have the flexibility to manage them so that they can produce what the GIS community wants. I think that’s what part of the goal is too.
Slockett: Well I would just like to say that we’ve managed the resources that we’ve had quite well. We’ve accomplished significant progress. We’ve alerted you ahead of time that there was a problem coming and we have alerted you throughout that the problem was continuing. You said no to one person and now you’re saying yes to three people in order to get caught up for doing the things that you wouldn’t give us one person to do. We’re still just asking for one person. It seems to me that is a perfectly reasonable request. It is the Auditor’s statutory authority to do this and we need skills and expertise in order to make sure that the maps are good and are up to standards. The notion that the election is the problem should be addressed by providing us the facilities we need to have an election. The truth is that this building is no longer adequate for the size County and the needs that we have in the County. We had a 15% increase in registration, a 25% in voter turnout, and a 50% increase in early voting and physical facilities weren’t enough to deal with that. If you think that the elections should have its own separate office, then let’s talk about that, let’s deal with the real problem. The notion that the County Auditor’s Office shouldn’t do anything that doesn’t affect anything outside its office shows a complete and profound misunderstanding and lack of knowledge about the Auditor’s Office. We produce the payroll for the entire County. We produce the accounts payable for every department. Your check has my name on it Sally, that’s not just something the Auditor’s Office…
Stutsman: I wish you would direct the whole committee instead of just me Tom. That’s not fair. That’s not fair.
Slockett: All right I will. Maybe you can address your comments to the entire GIS group.
Stutsman: I did. I didn’t address you specifically with my comments.
Slockett: Well let’s drop it please and let me continue. We provide the tax lists for the entire County. We record 6.8 billion dollars in valuation for the County. We keep track of the TIFs for the County. It’s a very complex job. Almost everything the County Auditor’s Office does effects other departments, if not all or a majority of them and the entire County. So the notion that the election is the problem should be dealt with by addressing that problem and not by making an excuse to take some of our needed resources to do our statutory functions.
Greazel: Can I address the County Attorney representative? Andy do you see anything in the proposal that would usurp their statutory requirement. You don’t see anything about stopping doing mapping as such that I can see. We’re just talking about GIS which isn’t the same as mapping in my mind, but am I misreading that?
Assistant County Attorney Andy Chappell: Well, Pat has weighed in on this with the memorandum and frankly I’m not in a position to supplant or add anything to his memo. I think it speaks for itself. I think if the Commission has a recommendation that goes to the Board on Thursday and the Board then has questions of Pat I know he is covering the meeting Thursday and maybe that is an appropriate time to ask him. At this point I don’t have anything to add to his memo.
Greazel: I don’t think that from my participation on the Committee there was nothing that was meant to usurp your doing your statutory mapping duty. But we were concentrating more on GIS. In my mind they’re not interchangeable. I think you had mapping long before we were doing GIS. You can do the same job. Because we’re doing something in GIS, I don’t think in my mind, I don’t think that the statutes have changed as far as I know. Do you have a statutory duty to do GIS?
Slockett: I think there is a real misunderstanding there because our mapping now is done on GIS. We no longer have AutoCAD. We don’t do hand drawn maps. So that’s the method that we’re working cooperatively with the GIS Committee and the GIS Coordinator and all of the other departments including the Assessor’s Offices. That’s the direction we’ve decided to move. We have agreed with it. But that is the tool we now use to meet our statutory requirements.
Schultz: So do you not do your plat maps by hand anymore?
Kistler: We plot them off the GIS.
Schultz: OK, you don’t any of that updating yourself?
Kistler: The names we do because it’s difficult to get multiple names and multiple book and pages to generate as labels in GIS with just the straight up software that we have. There might be some plat book applications available that would allow us to take any number of deed holders and any number of book and page references and place those on a plat book page, but we currently don’t have that capability. We also have a lack of data to put all of that information on there because one of the things that happened with the conversion was we basically took a step backwards on the book and page field. The HP system had 4 book and pages. The Invision system has one so we’re going to need to do some database development and join some tables that have those additional book and pages that we need on our plat book pages. Because there could be any number, if there are six or seven deeds for current ownership, those all have to be displayed on the plat. So there is quite a bit of work we need to do on that with databases to display all of that information.
Thompson: Sally and I had proposed that the mapping and real estate update proceed concurrently and at the point that the mapping was completed it would go to the Auditor’s Office for QA/QC. And the specific thing that Pat seems to object to is that we said that after a certain period of time it would become the plat. It sounds as if Pat is saying that is not acceptable, that the Auditor’s Office would have to have as long as it took them to get it done, which potentially opens us up to the same problem that we have now.
Slockett: I think Pat’s overriding point was that we need to cooperate and not have confrontation on this. To me that means not pitting funding for GIS against statutory duties of the Auditor. I think we have worked as a good partner in full cooperation. We’ve done everything we could with the resources we have. We have excellent people and we’ve done a good job given what we have. It seems to me that cooperation and decency would allow us to have the one person we’ve been asking for 5 consecutive years together with whatever additional GIS data and GIS employees that were hired. We’ll continue to cooperate and it’s going to be to everyone’s advantage to do it that way. I don’t understand why other than the political reasons you referred to earlier, why you wouldn’t consider such a reasonable proposal.
Havel: This is how I’ve come to understand the situation as far as the Thompson-Stutsman proposal is that it would not take away human resources from your department. These are additions to the County that would supplement the technical aspect of the operation. I look at it right now at this point as a neutral entity. I’m concerned with the database whether it's housed within the Auditor’s Office or in IS. It needs to be kept up to date. Not just for real estate purposes but for emergency management, emergency response, disaster recovery, and obviously customer public service. I guess what I emphasize is we need to come together and get some common ground.
Slockett: Yes, learn to cooperate and get this done. I agree.
Havel: Obviously that involves communication. That’s I think how this was brought up has really deterred it, because you kind of built and proposed your system and the Supervisors proposed their system. I think you did an excellent job of presenting the case. But I also think there are other concerns out there that need to be addressed. Without making some grandiose statement, more time would be nice in order to come more fully together instead of saying one way or the other. It’s human resources that need to be developed at this point in time. Whether they’re in the Auditor’s Office or in IS, I guess personally, I would suggest more time to discuss it, but I think ultimately more resources need to be approved and submitted to the Supervisors at this time because if we can’t come to a good conclusion this isn’t going to work.
Kistler: So we’re all in total agreement that money needs to be allocated for additional staffing. The question is where. But if they’re in a hurry for a decision certainly that decision is a no-brainer to recommend funding the additional positions that are needed for GIS parcel maintenance and some of the other concerns you have for E911 database and those other things. Certainly we don’t argue that at all. We do need to fund those positions.
Slockett: We’ve been arguing for it since before you were here.
Havel: Right.
Kistler: We can certainly work out where those positions need to be.
Havel: The parcel database is the primary addressing data field. That’s where as the Sheriff’s Department moves into computer aided dispatching, and computer aided mapping for dispatching, that database comes more of a priority because of the visualization of what’s out there, who owns what and what the addresses are. So in addressing the statutory issue, I’ve talked to several other counties and there are several other counties within Iowa that actually contract this work on an annual regular basis. But the Auditor obviously authorizes that map before it is released to the public so they have the final say on whether it is good or bad and whether it goes in or not. That’s certainly something that this proposal would maintain. Two counties in Iowa, Marshall County and Pottawattamie County both have moved the mapping the GIS functions out of the Auditor’s and put them underneath the GIS Coordinator or manager. They did that for two reasons, one it takes that funding which is usually higher in pay because they have one person in Marshall County answering phones and doing the public plus doing the mapping, and she was paid quite well. The Auditor felt let’s move her to another department, she’s no longer underneath my budget, I can hire more lower level staff to do the day to day customer service, answering the phones, etc. Like I said, I bring this to you as an example. Pottawattamie County moved it and they used the digital version as the map and they’ve moved away from any hand drawn plat books of any kind and specifically to it. With GIS you don’t need the labels displayed because you can click on a parcel and have all of that information brought to you through tables and attributes. With that I’ll stop.
Stutsman: One thing that I hear the Committee saying is that they want dedicated resources to this, not staff that can be diverted off on other tasks. I hear that this is such a detailed involved process that it requires undivided attention and dedicated staff. I think that was part of the reason to put it in another IS department, because that would be the only thing that they would be doing. They wouldn’t be asked to do elections when things got busy. I think we are supportive of cross training but I think the expectation of this is that this would be a very specialized dedicated task for employees to do. And like you said Rick, because of that it requires the higher level of pay grade. It’s not appropriate for someone to answer the phone and be making what a GIS individual would be making.
Slockett: Since you brought it up Sally, I would like to have Mark address the amount of time that John McKiness spent in elections.
Kistler: Well John is very helpful when we need someone for satellite voting. But he doesn’t necessarily go out of his way to do anything other than GIS. He loves GIS. He would be very happy doing only that. I do make sure that that basically is all he does. That is all Sal does. Sal does nothing but GIS. John did do some satellite voting. He helped with some setups and closings which are a couple of hours a piece. He staffed one satellite voting for one day and that was on Saturday at Hy-Vee. It was overtime. He was also the only person in the office who was allowed to come in and work the Saturdays that the office was open and not do elections work. Everyone who volunteered for that work except for John had to work on elections business. He worked on GIS the days we were open on Saturday. Kathy did no satellite voting. Sal did no satellite voting. As far as John helping with mailing out ballots registering voters, helping voters at the counter, he’s just not going to do it. He’s busy doing his GIS. He’s back in the corner so that that’s what he’s doing. Really the only distraction is the phone. So if we get this quiet space, if we can get a room next to the Auditor’s Office, or partition off the area, we can shut the ringer off the phone and get rid of that distraction. We will take the steps that are necessary to isolate that work from distractions and we will continue to only have people doing GIS work put in the extra work on the off hours. He did do some setups and closings in his regular GIS hours but he made up for that on Saturdays by doing GIS.
Swartzendruber: Jean do you have something.
Schultz: One concern I’ve got also is that, and I don’t like to bring up the past necessarily, but sometimes in the past GIS positions have suffered because people left those position were left open to help cover positions in other areas. I mean couldn’t that happen again or how would we know that wouldn’t happen again. Like when Brian Cover left and when KD left and it’s my understanding Tom that leaving those positions open helped cover for the part time positions in minutes or wherever. So in essence resources then get shifted from GIS to other areas. How would that not happen again?
Kistler: Don’t cut our budget and force us to either lay people off or leave a position open.
Slockett: We would have no intention of doing that. When you get a large budget cut and someone leaves and then the Auditor’s Office budget is about 95% personnel. So you don’t have many choices when a large budget cut is given to you and if someone has left then leaving a position vacant is the only choice because you can’t lay off someone under the collective bargaining contract. You can’t pick who you lay off, you have to lay off the most recently hired person. So for example, if you hired a new person and then had to lay someone off that’s who you have to lay off under the collective bargaining contract.
Schultz: Isn’t it the new person in that classification?
Slockett: So Jean if your budget was slashed what would you do? If someone left and left a position open would you hire a new person and then lay off one of your longer term employees? Sometimes we have to deal with difficult situations. I hope that doesn’t happen again and I wouldn’t want to interfere with GIS, but you know you have to deal with realities. We would certainly call it to your attention if we needed additional resources. And we would let you know what the circumstances were that we were dealing with.
Swartzendruber: I’m sorry. Ralph you had…
Public Health Director Ralph Wilmoth: Mark if there were some miracle in time and space and resources suddenly occurred and you were completely caught up, just absolutely completely caught up. You guys have had a lot of history and information and I’m like Pat White referred to himself, I’m pretty ignorant about this situation, but if you were absolutely totally caught up could you keep up right now with the staff that you have?
Kistler: I would agree with the other proposal that a couple of full time positions should be able to do it.
Wilmoth: Well I’m asking the question if you didn’t have the staff…
Kistler: If we double the full time staff…
Stutsman: No.
Wilmoth: No.
Slockett: He’s saying that with the staff we have now.
Kistler: No way.
Wilmoth: Everything is completely caught up.
Kistler: There’s no way.
Swartzendruber: Then I must be missing something because you’re asking to maintain the part time people.
Kistler: Until we get caught up.
Swartzendruber: So those people would then go away after you presumably got caught up? So would that one person then allow you to keep caught up?
Slockett: Yes one additional full time person and once we were caught up and once if we hire an outside vendor the QA/QC is done on the part that they’ve done and any errors that they’ve made have been corrected or that they have identified have been corrected then we would phase out the temporary part time people.
Swartzendruber: But I thought we just said you needed two people.
Slockett: We need two full time people.
Swartzendruber: OK, John being one. I’m sorry. I thought you meant two additional.
Slockett: No. We need two including the one we have, so we need one additional full time person to stay caught up on a day forward basis. That’s all we’re asking.
Greazel: It was our objective today to decide basically whether we want to forward this to the Supervisors as our recommendation. I came expecting if I heard something different to change my mind, then I would vote not to do it. I haven’t heard anything that gave me the assurance that things were going to change if we didn’t do something proactive on this. I feel that we ought to go forward with this proposal and present it to the Supervisors for their consideration and if they have a discussion and decide something it would be fine but I haven’t heard anything to change my mind that the proposal isn’t a good solution to the problem that we have.
Swartzendruber: So is this a motion to approve the proposal for Thompson and Stutsman?
Greazel: Yes it is.
Swartzendruber: Is there a second?
Dvorak: Second.
Swartzendruber: All of those in favor?
Several Group members: aye.
Swartzendruber: Opposed?
Slockett: No.
Kistler: No.
Swartzendruber: The ayes have it. We’ll send this on to the Board.
DISCUSSION/ACTION FISCAL YEAR 2006 GIS BUDGET RECOMMENDATION
Swartzendruber: Next item on the agenda is discussion/action FY 06 GIS budget recommendation.
Havel: Did everybody get a copy of the budget requested?
Stutsman: I think the process Andy is that these budget requests are approved by this Committee and then they are forwarded on for Jean’s budget to be included in. He’ll be part of that process now.
Schultz: This was approved by the Technical Advisory Committee but it really needed to be approved by the Policy Committee.
Chappell: Oh sure, I just wondered why he wouldn’t stay for this discussion.
Thompson: Eventually it would come to him. It would be out of turn.
Stutsman: He’ll get it.
Havel: It should be fairly brief, I hope. Essentially there is reoccurring costs in software maintenance and funding to purchase additional software when needed. Item one is that, it is for $42,000. Annual software maintenance for all the software we have currently is approximately $31,000. We always have allocated additional money for additional hardware, whether it be an additional server, or additional PCs, or upgrades PCs, or printers and that is the reoccurring item that is within that amount. We have in the past used that money to fund or assist in funding additional plotters or as I said servers. We purchased one server and assisted in upgrading or purchasing a server to assist in the database development so we’ve actually purchased two servers over the past few years with that funding. The big item, number three, is database development. There’s the Public Land Survey Enhancement, which is something we budgeted for in this last year and we hope to budget for in the future year and that is something that Mark brought up in terms of building and upgrading our Public Land Survey data which is the framework for all the parcel development. If those lines presented in that database which shows section, township, and range, quarter section, quarter-quarter section, aren’t accurate, it causes problems throughout the entire database. Like I said before, that’s kind of the framework that parcels are built on. 2006 orthophotography, I’ve talked with Iowa City and Coralville and they’re both planning to get new orthophotography for 2006. If we partner with them and work with them obviously the bigger product, the lower cost it will be to us. Primarily we’re just working for the orthos, they would be working for other additional layers as far a planemetrics and contour data so this is an opportunity to work on a project with other governments, other cities, and I think it’s a win-win.
Dvorak: Rick, can I ask you a quick question? We recently had a presentation done by, I can’t remember the name of the company, they did the four quad pictures and they gave us an approximate quote of less than $100,000 to do the whole county which would include the city.
Havel: That’s a totally different product.
Dvorak: I know, but I think that is what I’m trying to say. I wasn’t aware of that. Is that something we can start looking at as a possibility? Because I know you need the ortho photos for the department.
Havel: On the GIS stand point you know I wouldn’t recommend it.
Dvorak: Its more for the Auditor’s/Assessor’s Office?
Havel: It’s a nice product. It definitely is nice, but as far as allocating funds from GIS I wouldn’t think it would be legitimate.
Dvorak: Just wanted to bring it up.
Havel: They even stated in that demo that it doesn’t replace orthophotography. Those are the two big ones at the moment. Number four is ongoing training, support, database migrations, user training, GIS consultants, regular conference attendance and training for me. At this point that’s the amount, $152, 000 which is in addition to last year’s budget which was around $124,000 but obviously as I’ve stated we’ve had an increase in the database development area and that is where it stands.
Greazel: Can I ask a question, Rick? On that Public Land Survey, is part of that labor? Do you hire that done?
Havel: It’s a combination, it could be part time, primarily it will be contracted by surveyors or other private consultants to do that. There’s some opportunity for cost savings. Secondary Roads has been a partner in this and they are really eager to get to contribute some time and resources to this. Obviously there’s no dollar amount that could be easily attached to it but they have said they would work with us on that.
Schultz: I think if there was time available and we talked about possibly the GIS specialist helping with this also.
Havel: It’s a key part to the big puzzle of getting parcels put together.
Greazel: I’ll make a motion that be approved.
Swartzendruber: Is there a second?
Thompson: Second.
Swartzendruber: All those in favor?
Group: Aye
Swartzendruber: All those opposed? We’ll send that up. Is there any other business? If not, let’s adjourn. Thank you very much for coming.
Adjourned at 4:08 p.m.
Transcribed from tape by Casie Kadlec, Recording Secretary
Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor