GIS Steering Committee

“Where People Count” MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS 1000 Civic Center Drive, Niles, Illinois 60714 Telephone (847) 588-8000 Fax (847) 588-8050 GIS Steering Committee Meeting January 14, 2010 Co-Chairs: Andrew Przybylo – Trustee George Van Geem – Village Manager Persons in attendance: Steve Cusick MIS Dept. Mousa Nazzal Engineering Dept. Chuck Ostman Community Development Dept. Bob Pilat Public Services Andrew Przybylo Trustee Bill Shaw MIS Dept. George VanGeem Village Manager Andrew Vitale MIS Dept. Rich Wlodarski Community Development Dept. The meeting was called to order at 8:05 a.m. G. Van Geem turned the meeting over to A.Vitale. Agenda Item #1 – Old Business – Project Updates Monument Re-calibration M. Nazzal received two proposals for monument re-calibration: one from Gewalt-Hamilton for $15,800 and one from A. P. Surveying Company for $11,500. They would both use the same method, using two NGS monuments in the area and loop it around to verify the horizontal, and using two FEMA benchmarks and run the level around for the vertical. According to Gewalt- Hamilton and other surveyors, this is the best and most accurate method. We will re-calibrate a total of 26 monuments. A. Przybylo asked for clarification as to what benefit this is to the Village of Niles. If our monuments are accurate, then everything we do in Public Works, Police and Fire, as well as third-party contractors, will be based off of more accurate measurements. G. VanGeem noted that this is of value to the residents when they have stormwater and flooding issues. It was noted that while the county takes measurements for the structures that they maintain, it does not for our infrastructure. M. Nazzal responded to a question regarding A. P. Surveying Company, saying that he has confidence in them, and that they use the same equipment as Kara Company (the company that is a provider of GPS equipment and surveying services, and who initially demonstrated GPS equipment to us.) G. VanGeem asked for time to review the proposals until next month, and asked that approval be put on next month’s meeting agenda. MWRD GPS Data Share MWRD is capturing all GPS information for their structures, and A. Vitale has asked them to share their information with us. They have sent a data sharing agreement that covers us giving data to them, but not them giving data to us. Joe Annunzio has asked A. Vitale to consolidate both sharing agreements into a single agreement between both of us. A. Vitale will try to do this within the next couple of weeks, and have Joe review it. A. Vitale will have an update at the next meeting. Agenda Item #2 – Departmental Projects Sewer Mapping Update A. Vitale provided a map to demonstrate his progress on the sewer mapping. He is about 2/3 of the way through, having just completed mapping everything north of Oakton. He is about to move out of the mostly residential areas and into the mostly industrial areas, where things should go more quickly. He is on schedule, and should be finished by the end of March, early April. Water Mapping Update Work continues on the water mapping. A. Vitale has received four or five more atlas sheets, verifying the water structures from the field crews at Public Works, and has made those changes. He will keep updating the information as he receives the remainder of the sheets. Maintenance Management System (MMS) B. Shaw reported that now that the Atlas upgrades have been completed, S. Cusick has begun building a model application and is developing some of the key components of the design as well as standards, such as security, that will be used. They expect to be working with A. Vitale and T. Spadoni next week. There should be more to report at the next meeting. A. Przybylo asked for an explanation of “Maintenance Management System.” B. Shaw responded that this is a tool that will be used by GIS and Public Services to maintain and manage Village assets. Our MIS Department is authoring this system because it would be cost- prohibitive to purchase the software, and its maintenance, that could do what we need it to do. Agenda Item #3 – New Business Cook County Data Sharing (Assessment Data) The assessment data from the Cook County Assessor’s office has been completed and is available. A. Vitale has applied for the Cook County Data Sharing agreement. The request to approve the resolution will be on the agenda of the January 26, 2010 Village Board meeting. He hopes to have the assessment data here by the next Steering Committee meeting. He has also coordinated with the Cook County GIS office to get the most recent cadastral layers (parcel layers) and will roll both of those changes into Atlas and our other products. He is still working on the rest of the planimetric data and putting it into our production data. After these two pieces 2 are in place (the assessment information and the parcels) we should be completely up-to-date with Cook County’s information for the 2009 calendar year. Atlas Enhancements & Bug Fixes A.Vitale reported that we have made numerous Atlas enhancements and bug fixes. Enhancements include active layer; north arrow; buttons on the toolbar (clear map button, zoom previous and zoom next); using the escape button; markup tools (text color, symbol size, leader lines, arrowheads); globe icons; print tool (legend and overview map, security, scale, page size and orientation, preview window, printing of markups); and print quality. These enhancements have made Atlas less taxing on the server, and allow Atlas to run more efficiently. When you “print,” a PDF is created and it can be saved and stored wherever you want it on the network (not on the hard drive.) S. Cusick commented that, because he wrote the tool 100%, he can modify it 100%. So if anyone has any ideas for enhancements, please let him know. These enhancements are available to the public (but not the ability to turn off the protection.) It was noted that no other municipality has this kind of product, with these print capabilities. A.Vitale said that other municipalities have asked him to present Atlas. Reukert-Mielke has seen it, loves it, and wants it. G. VanGeem said we will explore that option in the future. Because of the number of enhancements, we will have to schedule some additional training, probably in the spring. S. Cusick tried to make the tools as intuitive as possible, and T. Spadoni is in the process of writing the changes to Atlas’s “Help,” but training will be helpful to make users aware of all the changes. S. Cusick has put in the bulk of the time on these enhancements and has done amazing work. Kudos to Steve! GIS Vision List A.Vitale passed out a Gantt chart of the GIS vision list, including foreseen costs. He explained the markings on the Gantt chart. Money, or lack thereof, will be what will prohibit the completion of, or delay the start of, these projects. Another reason for delay would be the availability of personnel. A. Vitale does not do all of this on his own; he often relies on the staff of other departments. A.Przybylo asked if there are any projects that might be eligible for grant money from the federal government, perhaps Homeland Security. B. Shaw responded that he and T. Spadoni monthly review the latest grants, but that most grants go to Police and Fire, and “the GIS well has dried up.” Police and Fire do use GIS, but most of the grant money in the current fiscal year seems to be equipment-based, not data-based. It was proposed and accepted that as projects are completed, we leave them on the chart and change the color to indicate their completion. The updated Gantt chart should be presented at each meeting. 3 GIS Budget Review A. Vitale passed out a list of all budgeted GIS expenses for fiscal years 2009 and 2010, and the proposed GIS expenses for 2011. (This list was put together by B. Shaw.) B. Shaw noted that while employee costs grow a bit each year, we are actually asking for a little less in other areas and the proposed expenditures may not all be made in the same budget year. During the budget review, we can make adjustments. S. Cusick commented that as we get further along in the GIS project, the cost for data collection should dwindle down to almost nothing except for orthophotography every couple of years. A.Vitale will include both the Gantt chart and the budget list with the minutes of this meeting. G. VanGeem said that we will decide later if we want to discuss these lists at the next meeting. *** G. Van Geem called for approval of last meeting’s minutes. The motion was approved. Agenda Item #5 – Schedule the Next Meeting The next meeting will be Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 8:00 a.m. in the 2nd floor main conference room 218. The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 a.m. Steering Committee Members Andrew Przybylo Trustee atp@vniles.com George Van Geem Administration gvg@vniles.com 847-588-8002 Bill Shaw MIS wfs@vniles.com 847-588-8015 Andrew Vitale MIS ajv@vniles.com 847-588-8022 Steve Cusick MIS src@vniles.com 847-588-8018 Moses Nazzal Engineering mhn@vniles.com 847-588-7924 Scott Jochim Public Services snj@vniles.com 847-588-7901 Bob Pilat Public Services rmp@vniles.com 847-588-7926 Chuck Ostman Community Development cfo@vniles.com 847-588-8041 Rich Wlordarski Community Development rjw@vniles.com 847-588-8085 4