Seamless GIS integration with other software applications
Jane E. Hayes and Ann Ridnour
Logan County Assessor
315 Main Street
Sterling, CO 80751
General information
Logan County is a rural county of 1,839 square miles located on the high plains of northeastern Colorado.
According to the 1990 census, its population is approximately 18,800 persons with a median household income of
$22,065. Sterling is the county seat and is a major regional commercial center for northeastern Colorado.
Logan County does not have a data processing department or computer programmers on staff. The Assessor's Office
is comprised of 10 full time employees and maintains approximately 19,500 parcels, which includes approximately
11,500 parcels of real property. The 1999 total assessed value for Logan County is $144,773,120.
Duties of the Assessor
The County Assessor is required to discover, list and value all taxable properties within the county. Colorado
operates on a two-year assessment cycle, resulting in complete property revaluations every other year. Each year the
Assessor notifies property owners of the current year property values, conducts appeals, certifies valuations to the
taxing entities, and delivers the tax warrant to the County Treasurer after tax levies have been certified by the County
Commissioners. Assessors are also required to maintain county maps.
Hardware & Software Configuration
The Assessor's Office system server operates on a 200 MHz processor with 256 MB Ram memory and a 9.1 GB
hard drive. The individual workstations also have 200 MHz processors, 32 MB Ram Memory and 3.2 GB hard
drives. The workstations that perform the GIS functions have 64 MB Ram memory.
All of the software used in the Assessor's Office is "off the shelf." The network runs on Windows NT. The
assessment administration and valuation functions are performed utilizing Cole-Layer-Trumble, Inc. (CLT)
Integrated Assessment System (IAS). The GIS functions are performed by ESRI ArcCAD, which operates on an
AutoCAD engine. The Assessor's Office also utilizes ArcVIEW for end-user GIS applications. In addition, the
Assessor's Office utilizes the Microsoft Office 97 suite of products.
History of GIS and Assessment Software Within the County
The Assessor's Office purchased EarthOne GIS software in late 1988. EarthOne was a CAD-based GIS and was one
of the first desktop GIS applications available. GIS training and implementation began in earnest in early 1989. The
County converted to ESRI's ArcCAD, also CAD-based, GIS software in 1993.
Once the GIS program was in place, difficulties were encountered integrating the spatial GIS data with the tabular
data in the assessment system. The integration could be accomplished, but it required numerous cumbersome tasks
involving the saving, retrieving and joining of files. Not only was this time consuming, but it meant that the tabular
data was outdated the moment it was joined to the spatial data, thus requiring the entire download process to be run
and re-run in futile efforts to keep all of the data current.
The County converted to CLT's IAS assessment software early in 1998. This conversion to CLT dramatically
expanded the integration capabilities within the Assessor's Office, since it marked the first time that the assessment
and administrative systems were based on an "open" Relational Database Management System (RDBMS).
The integration
The County contracted with Farragut Systems, Inc. in mid-1998 to perform the seamless integration of its assessment
and GIS systems. The County's cost for the integration was less than the annual salary (excluding benefits) of an
entry-level clerk in the Assessor's Office and was significantly less than the cost of a full-time data
processing/programming position. The integration project was completed in a matter of weeks. The Assessor's
Office has been so pleased with the results of the integration that the original integration capabilities are currently
being expanded to include more assessment data fields.
