West Side's Story:
The Development and Implementation of Municipal GIS for
West Springfield, Massachusetts
Abstract
Introduction
Background
System Design
Proposing the GIS Concept
Initial IT Infrastructure
Initial Steps after Funding
Getting the System off of the Ground Floor
Growing Pains & False Starts
Outreach and Public Access
Challenges and Future Initiatives
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Author Information
The Town of West Springfield is a suburban community in western Massachusetts with a population of 28,000 and a vision of effective local government. This paper describes the cooperative process of implementing a multi-departmental GIS that was originally designed in 1994. The Town is currently beginning to integrate GIS into daily operations, after spending the past two years working with a contractor to complete a cadastral, topographic, and planimetric base-mapping project. This presentation will describe several facets of the project including the educational process for new users, community outreach initiatives, and plans for data maintenance in our rapidly changing community.
Local government in Massachusetts is quite unique, as there is a large amount of Commonwealth (State) level regulation, with very little coordination of local information resources at the state or county level. Unlike many other areas in the US, County Government in Massachusetts does not play much of a role at all. While local GIS in some states are coordinated at the county level, local GIS in Massachusetts is entirely an entity that is set up independently at the town or city level. As of the year 2000, fewer than half of the communities in Massachusetts have implemented a municipal GIS, with most of the GIS activity occurring within the Metro-Boston area. The Town of West Springfield is one of a growing minority of Communities in Western Massachusetts that is actively implementing a municipal GIS.This paper will recount the process followed by the Town in order to ensure that the investment in GIS technology will pay off for years to come. It is worth noting that after several years of preparing for GIS, the eventual implementation of GIS technology in West Springfield came at a time when desktop GIS was just beginning to become an accepted standard. As this town implements GIS while the technology is rapidly advancing, the local citizens benefit by seeing more results than originally anticipated.
West Springfield enjoys the benefit of being a close suburb of Springfield, Massachusetts’ third largest city, and is a commercial center for much of the region. At the same time, the Town has many of the characteristics of an old New England Town, including a tree-lined Town common, various historic attractions, and The ‘Big E,’ which is one of the largest agricultural fairs in the country. Later this year, the Town’s mayor/council governing charter will be inaugurated, ending more than 250 years of local government through a three-member board of selectmen, and an annual representative Town meeting.In 1994, the State’s Department of Revenue notified the Board of Tax Assessors that the West Springfield tax parcel maps were among the poorest in the state, and had to be updated. In the more densely populated areas of Town, these maps have been in continuous use since as early as 1915 (see Figure 1). It was clear to many within the local governing structure that this presented an obstacle to assessing or making zoning decisions fairly and equitably. The Principal Assessor was already aware of the technology of GIS, and he set out to determine whether the Town could begin to use this technology in order to maintain the tax maps.
Mapping and information technologies within the West Springfield Town Hall at this point in time were completely separate, and few other than the Tax Assessor were aware of the benefits of creating a shared map resource. The Needs Analysis process highlighted several areas where multiple departments were independently maintaining the same set of maps, with little consistency. Each department had distinct needs, all of which relate to tax parcels or addresses, hence the establishment of the cadastral map resources as the core of the system.
The estimated initial cost of a complete GIS implementation, including tax and base-mapping, was more than $1.2 Million. This cost did not include the annual cost of staffing, annual maintenance costs, or periodic system upgrade costs. The recommendation for staffing was for one full-time GIS Coordinator / System Administrator and One Full-Time Database Programmer. The thought of making such an investment in a technology that was relatively unknown to most Town residents was quite intimidating, and there were few proponents of making such a commitment.Based upon the Needs Analysis, the Board of Assessors were prepared to present a $1 Million proposal to the 1996 Annual Town Meeting. However, the need for the construction of a new middle school and the bonding requirements necessitated a delay of one year. This delay, which was disappointing at the time, proved to be beneficial to the Town because a year later, the Board of Assessors was able to present a proposal of $816,000 that contained more products, regardless of the lower cost. The advances in the technology clearly brought the price down to a more digestible level. The proposal was overwhelmingly approved by a vote of 149-5 by the 1997 Annual Town Meeting.
Information Technology was not foreign to the West Springfield Municipal Departments at the time of the initial GIS preparations. All Financial systems, including Tax Assessment, Bill Collection and Payroll, were automated in 1987 through the installation of a VAX 3600 with terminal access from every department. The VAX-based system is still in place today, although most users access it through terminal emulation with Windows PCs.
The PC network was strictly peer-to-peer through 10 base-t Ethernet cabling, which bridged everyone to a junction with the VAX system. There was one Windows NT Server for a PC-based Tax Assessment system, but otherwise, the network was comprised of a mix of protocols, with virtually no security features. Upgrading this system & teaching users to work within a secure networked environment would become a crucial component to implementing a GIS with varying levels of functionality and access.
There are a variety of database systems within the Town Hall, posing a challenge to those departments who wished to make connections between their data and geographic data. At best, some departments were using systems built upon common desktop relational database platforms, including MS Access and Paradox. However, a majority of the systems in use as of the beginning of the GIS implementation, were proprietary hierarchical database systems residing on the VAX. The Y2K challenge pushed the Town to upgrade some of these systems, including a Building Permit database in use since the initial VAX installation.
A major boost came when the Town’s CAMA system vendor, Vision Appraisal Technologies, upgraded their database system from a proprietary platform to the Oracle 8 platform. The new CAMA system allowed the Town to make major strides toward GIS-CAMA integration, with little effort, as the Vision CAMA system currently includes a MapObjects-based GIS interface. This will work directly with the Town’s tax parcel GIS data, once this portion of the project is complete.
Before the implementation of GIS, only the Town Engineer and the Water Department had access to automated mapping. Both departments use AutoCad with a set of base sketches that were drawn in 1993 for the purpose of mapping the approximate alignment of the Water and Sewer distribution networks.
The Town continued to retain the Boshe Institute as a guiding consultant through the course of the next two years. The Boshe Institute led the Town through the RFP process for selecting vendors to complete planimetric/topographic/cadastral base-mapping, and to provide GIS software and hardware. It was during this period of time that members of multiple municipal departments began to meet regularly as a ‘GIS Implementation Team.’ The selection of a mapping vendor in particular, was one exercise that helped this team to further understand just what could be expected from a GIS.
The original specifications for Base Mapping called for planimetric and topographic mapping to be compiled from aerial survey at a scale accuracy of 1:1,200. The increased involvement of the Town Engineer and personnel from the Department of Public Works led to a change in the request to accommodate mapping at a scale accuracy of 1:480. The original request for two-foot contour intervals was also increased to accommodate a contour interval of one-foot. These changes would potentially lead to savings for the Town from the elimination of much of the field survey work that was previously required for many Public Works projects.
The Cadastral Mapping Project was a costly undertaking because of the lack of adequate tax-maps from which to digitize. The method that was employed for mapping parcels, old lot lines, easements, right-of-ways and zoning districts, was full deed research; the Cadastral GIS data would essentially be reconstructed from the deed plans on file at the County Registry of Deeds. This was like piecing a puzzle together, and was much more costly than this project would normally be, with a cost of close to $20 per parcel for full automation.
A single vendor, The James W. Sewall Company of Old Town, ME, was selected to perform the Base and Cadastral Mapping Project. This company provided the advantage of being the source of all work to be performed, without the use of any subcontractors. The Mapping Project began in the Spring of 1998, with the establishment of a temporary ground control network, and an aerial survey.
The Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri) was selected in late 1998 as the primary vendor of GIS-related software and hardware. The initial specifications called for three ArcInfo licenses, eleven ArcView licenses, one Windows NT Server, one digitizing board, and a color dye-sublimation printer. The Town already owned a plotter that was used for plotting engineering drawings, and a large format scanner was purchased separately from the GIS project. The specification for three ArcInfo licenses was reduced to two licenses because of the availability of floating licenses, and primarily because only the administrative GIS users would have an initial use for the higher-level functionality of ArcInfo.
With the Mapping Project well under way in 1998, and draft planimetric maps being sent to the Town by October, a GIS Coordinator / System Administrator was hired in December of 1998. This position was designed as a 3-year contract, through which the primary role would be to coordinate the in-house implementation of the system, and to act as a GIS educator for Town Hall personnel. The first task would be to facilitate the verification of the planimetric and topographic mapping, as well as coordinating the installation of the hardware and software. The GIS Coordinator would become the technical liaison to the rest of Town Hall, fielding requests for system enhancements, and finding ways to meet the needs of a diverse set of departments.
Getting the System off of the Ground Floor
Once the GIS Coordinator was hired, the in-house development of the system was rapidly under way in early 1999. The GIS Implementation Team, which was composed of administrators and managers from most municipal departments, took on the task of performing field verification of all of the planimetric/topographic maps that were being produced by the Sewall Company. This exercise not only ensured that the base mapping would be as complete as possible, but it also solidified the commitment of the municipal departments to the GIS Project; those who would have the greatest need for accurate base maps were the ones performing the field verification.The anticipation of system implementation was great within Town Hall and the installation of a central GIS server, along with an Arc/Info license and 11 ArcView licenses allowed users a peek at what was to come. While the base mapping was not completed until late1999, the availability of GIS data provided by the state’s GIS Office, MassGIS, allowed users in Town Hall to become acquainted with ArcView. Of particular interest to most of the new GIS users, were the black and white digital orthophotos that were provided by MassGIS. As pilot areas in the base-mapping project became available, these truly illustrated the precision at which the GIS data was being collected.
The availability of free GIS data from MassGIS allowed the system to be demonstrated to several departments who would not otherwise see the results of GIS for more than a year. One example was when the Town Clerk, the Registrar of Voters, asked whether a voter distribution map could be produced, it was not expected to be possible for at least a year. However the availability of digital records of the addresses of voters from recent elections, along with Census Bureau Tiger Line Address Match Files, allowed for the production of a map of voter distribution with a 96% address match rate. This map was available within a week of the request, and it made a great impression upon the Town Clerk’s Office.
The challenge of teaching 11 new ArcView users to grasp the basics of GIS was made less daunting with the help of Avenue. After attending Esri’s 3-day Programming with Avenue course, the GIS Coordinator developed a simple menu-based interface for adding themes to a View (see Figure 2). This interface was saved as an extension that uses a dbase table in order to present the user with a categorized list of available themes. This saves the GIS Coordinator time when there are additions made to the list of available themes, as all that needs to be updated is the dbase table. This extension became a standard part of the ArcView interface in West Springfield from the very beginning of the GIS implementation, allowing new ArcView users to get started with a consistent interface. When a theme is added, it always
Figure 2: The West Springfield Data Viewer
Another basic use of ArcView that allowed new users to make consistent cartographic output was the use of Layout Templates (see figure 3). While municipal departments deal with maps on a daily basis, few other than the engineering staff are on the map production side. Instead of spending a lot of time teaching new users the basics of cartography, several standard map templates were developed, which included the Town seal and a statement about the source data.
Figure 3: The Standard West Springfield Map Template
Even with major enhancements, the introduction of new software will always necessitate some training. During the summer of 1999, the West Springfield Middle School’s computer lab was used for three days, as James Thompson, a locally licensed ArcView Instructor conducted an Introduction to ArcView training. The advantages of using a locally licensed instructor were that the course could be modified to include some local data, and the enhancements to ArcView that were made in-house. There was also a cost savings to the Town because of the availability of free lab space at the middle school.The mobilization of more than ten trained ArcView users gave the GIS Project a jump start that has paid big dividends already, even though as of June, 2000, the tax parcel mapping is not complete. As the Sewall Company nears completion of the tax mapping, and draft maps are sent to the Town, the maps are scanned through a large-format scanner and registered to the Massachusetts State Plane Coordinate System. The images are added to the list of available layers, and although the Assessor and the Town Planner are the only personnel to check the paper maps, all users throughout Town Hall have access to these draft maps. Several tax map errors have been found through everyday use of the GIS. These errors are either printed as maps or noted using point shapefiles with a comment field, and sent to the Sewall Company, where they are corrected.
As with any new system, not everything went as planned from the beginning. The initial PC network in Town Hall was not prepared to accommodate the high bandwidth demand of a GIS, so Category 5 network cabling was installed for all GIS users. A full LAN cabling upgrade is planned for fiscal 2001, which should accommodate growth in high bandwidth applications throughout the LAN.Beyond the infrastructure, the network protocols in place were not standardized across the network, as some PCs were networked with NetBEUI, a protocol made for much smaller LANs. This was affecting network performance and reliability. As integration with the Assessors’ CAMA was approaching. it was found that network connectivity to the CAMA’s Oracle database was virtually impossible from certain sectors of the network because there were actually two Windows NT Domains in place. One domain was established when the CAMA server was installed, and another was established when the GIS server was installed. This was never previously a problem because most applications worked through mapped network drives across Windows Workgroups. In order to solve the problem, it was necessary to re-install the operating systems on both servers. A network consultant was hired for this process, and it actually resulted in a drastic improvement in the way that the PC network is utilized in Town Hall. Consistent security measures are now in place, and network reliability has improved. Additionally, all network users now have use of shared space on the servers, where essential files are stored and backed up regularly.
The relational database integration remains as the largest area of uncertainty. The second position named within the Needs Analysis / System Design, Relational Database Programmer, was not hired. Both the GIS Coordinator and the Computer Department Director have shared the added responsibility of developing relational databases. The primary problem that this has caused has been that there is currently no GIS or Computer Department staff who are proficient with Oracle, and hence, the Town’s Oracle licenses are not being used to their full potential. As staff is trained in the use and administration of Oracle, all new relational databases have been developed in Microsoft Access, and there are plans for future migration once Oracle is fully deployed.
While the primary purpose of developing a GIS has been for the enhancement of the basic governing functions of the Town, few can argue that is presents a great resource for many others. The Schools of West Springfield have expressed interest in integrating GIS into the curriculum, and they plan to purchase ArcView site licenses for the High School and Middle School for the 2000-2001 school year. There is already one high school science teacher who has taken advantage of the GIS data availability by using the planimetric/topographic data with ArcExplorer in her classroom. Several other teachers have shown interest, and will be using GIS in the classroom once ArcView is available.The Town Historian, Bernard Lally, has become greatly involved in the GIS Project. He and a West Springfield High School student have been learning to use ArcView in weekly sessions after school at the GIS Project Office. More than 25 years ago, Mr. Lally began studying the history of the development of West Springfield since the original Colonial land grants in the 1600’s. He has compiled much of the property mapping throughout the town’s history onto a USGS topographic base. Since the GIS has become a reality in West Springfield, the long-term goal is to use the GIS tax parcel data as a base with which to map all of the historic landholdings since the first establishment of the town. This may eventually become an online historic atlas, which will give users an understanding of the growth of the town over time.
As the GIS project has gained notice throughout the town, the call for maps has increased almost every month. Rarely a day goes by when members of the public don’t drop by looking for a tour of the system and inevitably, a map. All members of the GIS Implementation Team agreed that in order for the GIS implementation to be effective, a low-maintenance map distribution strategy would be necessary. The Internet is the perfect medium for this, and the strategy is currently to make all stock maps available online in Adobe Acrobat format. The West Springfield GIS site at http://www.west-springfield.ma.us/gis not only serves the function of giving resident instant access to the most up to date maps, but it also allows the GIS staff to concentrate on tasks other than producing and selling custom maps.
Challenges and Future Initiatives
The philosophy in place in West Springfield is that GIS is a tool, which should not be relegated to the back offices. The goal over the next two years is to integrate GIS into the workflow of the municipal departments, much like the use of other common software, like word processors and spreadsheet applications. The deployment of ArcView GIS in a networked environment has given all departments access to a relatively easy to use and consistent spatial data inventory.Because the initial base mapping is just being completed, the initial use of the system has been primarily as a view/query/map-printing system. The biggest challenge that will be faced within the coming years will be in establishing acceptable protocols for updating the spatial database. The Planning Board is currently reviewing a proposal to require digital plan submission for all subdivision and commercial development plans. In order to facilitate this, the Department of Public Works, plans to begin establishing a second-order control network for local surveyors. The Building Inspector is currently working with the GIS project on developing a method for adding new structures and additions to the base map. All of these efforts will be necessary in order to keep the GIS up to date, and hence to meet the needs of all departments.
There is currently an initiative to integrate mapping into the Fire Department’s Alarm and Ambulance Dispatch operations. The 2000 Annual Town Meeting approved the appropriation of $17,000 to develop a customized mapping system that would integrate with the current Enhanced-911 dispatch system. The E-911 system currently automatically sends an incident street address to the dispatch desk as an ASCII text string, and an integrated mapping system would match this address to the base map. The challenge is that all 50 Fire Fighters in the West Springfield Fire Department share the responsibility of running the Dispatch Desk. In order for a mapping system to work, the mapping must be quick, simple and easy to manipulate. The mapping must also be kept up to date, making system maintenance all the more crucial.
The Board of Assessors plan to deploy a public query station at the Assessors Office. The system, which is integrated with the Vision Appraisal CAMA, allows taxpayers to browse their property tax information and to print a property card without the assistance of Town Hall staff. Future planned enhancements to the system include the integration of a map query station for browsing tax parcel maps.
While few people in West Springfield knew what a GIS was just six years ago, the system which is just over a year into implementation, has already made a major impact upon the way that Town Hall business is conducted. The open involvement of a majority of the municipal departments in planning the system has been an educational process that has brought a measure of cooperation into Town Hall. This institution-wide approach is increasingly necessary in order to maintain an effective system that will grow as needs grow. Special thanks are in order to all who have made the West Springfield GIS a reality, and to those who are making it a valuable resource:Edward O’Brien, Principle Assessor, West Springfield
Robert Lima, Director, Boshe Institute
Richard Murray, IT Director, West Springfield
Jeffrey Auer, Senior Project Manager, West Springfield DPW
Richard Werbiskis, Town Planner, West Springfield
Tom Lagodich, Assistant Building Inspector, West Springfield
Jim Lyons, Town Engineer, West Springfield
James Russell, Executive Secretary, West Springfield Board of Selectmen
Dennis Miles, Former Executive Secretary, West Springfield Board of Selectmen
David Gromaski, Water Department Administrator, West Springfield
Sean Kelley, Conservation Commission Administrator, West Springfield
Mark Stinson, Conservation Commission Chair, West Springfield
Bernard Lally, Town Historian, West Springfield