Using GIS for tax asset allocation
Old System
The old system consisted of communicating throughout the years on all new projects files
from Engineering, determining the total cost for the project, and communicating this to
Plant Accounting by reporting such items as size, type, length, and date of installation of
pipe, and determining these amounts within each tax district. In addition, other
departments reported assets to Plant Accounting such as station costs by project file,
building and land costs by tax district, and inventory by address. Plant Accounting also
maintained a running total of costs for such assets as meters, service mains, and right of
ways, not knowing what tax district they actually existed in.
When new projects replaced old projects, it was Engineering's responsibility to report to
Plant Accounting the size, type, date installed, and length of pipe that was retired for each
tax district. Plant Accounting would then try and update FLAME based on these
numbers. When new tax districts were created or boundaries were changed, Engineering
would have to determine lengths of pipe by size, type, and date installed that needed to be
moved from one tax district to another. This process went on all year, year after year.
Then, by February of the following year, the costs would need to be added up based on
new tax district boundaries and reported to the state. If there were large changes in asset
costs for a specific tax district, explanations in the form of legal documents would need to
be submitted to the State of North Carolina. This tedious and stressful process, which
was performed by a number of departments throughout the year(s), often was put off until
the last moment, and breakdown in communications often occurred.
Recommendations
It was agreed upon that FLAME and TIGER would supply the necessary dataflows into a
Microsoft Access Database in order to prepare the annual reports. The Figure below
shows what data was used from each system.
There are five defined methods of allocating costs by tax district. Based on the
geographic information maintained in TIGER and the level of detail costs maintained in
FLAME, one of the five methods was selected to allocate costs. Following is an example
of each of the five methods of allocation
Method 1. Allocation based on a single point feature in TIGER
In the following illustration, FLAME reported the project cost for project number A100
was $40,000.00. TIGER was able to locate a Station which has the project number as an
attribute and determined it to be in Tax District 100. Thus, the $40,000.00 was allocated
to Tax District 100. This was the simplest and most straightforward allocation method.
Method 2. Allocation based on a Tax District
For certain features that did not exist in TIGER, FLAME was able to provide the cost and
the tax district and this data was loaded into the database. Many buildings and land fit
into this allocation method.
Method 3. Allocation based on a specific Linear Feature
Using method 3, a linear feature such as a Transmission Pipe crossed many tax districts.
FLAME was able to provide a total cost for the installation of the Transmission Main
based on the Transmission Line Number. TIGER was able to determine what percentage
of the pipe length existed in each tax district. The total cost from FLAME was then
multiplied times the percentage of pipe length in each tax district to determine the
allocation cost.
Method 4. Allocation based on many linear features
In the next example, many linear features were used to allocate costs based on a category.
FLAME was able to provide the total cost for Distribution Main based on a combination
category of size, type (material), and year installed. TIGER then determined the total
length of pipe for each category of size, type, and year. It then determined the percentage
that existed in each tax district. The total cost for each category of Distribution Main was
then multiplied by each percentage of that category in each tax district to determine the
allocation cost.
