City mulls GIS options

SANDPOINT — While preparing the upcoming budget, city officials will be weighing the merits of hiring a support technician for an innovative piece of software.

Lisa Ailport and Darrel Ramus of Ruen-Yeager and Associates attended both the Public Works and Administrative committee meetings this week to detail the benefits of maintaining the Geographic Information System set up in 2009.

GIS is a program that displays a photographic map of a region similar to what one might see on Google Earth. The hook comes from GIS’ ability to overlay multiple data sources onto the

map that the user can view on the fly. For example, a simple click through the viewing menu can highlight zoning divisions, display water mains or identify every fire hydrant in the city. The program can also color-code multiple areas of city to easily distinguish categories, a much used feature while discussing zoning or development at public meetings.

 “I cannot possibly relate how efficient this program is,” Sandpoint Planning Director Jeremy Grimm told the Administrative Committee. “The level of added efficiency and time-savings GIS gives us is tremendous.”

The time savings comes primarily from the program’s ability to link all the legal information for any given parcel of land to its location on the map. Rather than spending massive amounts of time digging through file cabinets to find all the information for the properties in a particular region, a city worker can use GIS to retrieve the data in seconds. Everything from tax information to a property owner’s place of residence is available.

“So if you wanted to find out whether that shed your neighbor’s building is permitted without talking to him, you could use the system and find all the regulations right there,” Grimm said.

 The system is also useful for public workers, who can use a handheld version to locate any given manhole in the city, even when they’re covered in snow. Police Chief Mark Lockwood praised the program for its investigative potential, allowing law enforcement to run situational tests, set up crime timelines over an affected location and detect patterns in criminal activity.

However, since setting up the program in 2009, some of the data in the program has gone stale, according to Grimm. He pointed out an area of land that had been purchased and subdivided, resulting in each parcel receiving a separate identification number. However, GIS still listed the property as a single unit with one number.

“Right now, maintenance is our top priority,” he said.

To keep GIS running as a viable system, the city would need to either hire or contract a software engineer. A qualified individual could easily create widgets to mine the city’s other data systems for information, keeping GIS up-to-date at all times. At that point, the city could potentially make the program viewable on its website, allowing for easy access to public information. Grimm said that the city would probably spend $70,000 a year on a full-time employee’s salary and benefits, while a contractor would cost less, although the exact amount would vary based on a number of factors.

According to city council members, GIS development was a topic to seriously consider while putting together the city’s budget.

“We’re at a crossroads, because we need to either invest and support this or dump it entirely,” Councilman Justin Schuck said. “In my opinion, this was the number one oversight of last year’s budget.”