Fayette

County took another step into the 21st Century

last week, with plans for similar steps over the

next five years.

Geographic

Information System technology will cost the

county about $645,723 over five years if all of

the elements of that technology recommended by

county staff are approved. The county has

previously allocated an additional $385,000 to

have consultants Keck and Wood help put the new

system in place.

Better,

more accurate, more useful maps for a variety of

purposes will be the result.

"Now

you take a paper flood plain map, make a clear

copy of it and put it over a topo map and spread

it out on a table," said David Borkowski,

acting county engineer and chairman of the staff

committee working on GIS. "With GIS you can

do it all in the computer. You can overlay all

kinds of different things without having to look

at 10 or 15 paper maps.

"And

it's an intelligent map, too. You can ask it

questions. You can look at a piece of property

and ask, `How far away from the flood plain is

it?' Or you can tell it to list all the property

within 100 feet of the landfill that's worth more

than $100,000," Borkowski said.

For

now, county commissioners have approved spending

$57,641 to "convert the tax digest from a

manually prepared paper product to an interactive

digital product."

Along

with a request for the funding for the tax

office, Borkowski presented commissioners with a

five-year plan for computer upgrades and

equipment purchases that will make a variety of

detailed maps available in several county

departments.

How

the technology is used depends upon the needs of

a particular department. "The tax assessors

need digital versions of the tax maps,

engineering is concerned about flood plains and

things like that, elections wants the election

districts," said Borkowski.

Eventually

the property tax information and other GIS maps

will be available to the public electronically,

said Borkowski, with public access terminals

available in the pertinent departments.

The

five-year plan is subject to annual budget

review. Commissioners can implement any or all of

the improvements as they see fit.

Included

in the plan is money for hiring a coordinator to

run the GIS program in 2003, but depending upon

how the purchases develop, that person may not be

needed until a year or two after that, said

Borkowski.

Commissioners,

who earlier had complained that every few months

a new GIS spending request was being presented

with no long-term idea where those expenditures

were leading, expressed delight at having the

five-year plan presented all at once.

"Something

we've been looking for is to have a plan

presented to us that is not piecemeal," said

commission Chairman Harold Bost. "I'm very

pleased and appreciative."

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