Property Review and Parcel Management GIS Solutions

property review apn number property review information property owner summary

Executive Summary

Problem

Most city and county government have created a vast number of diverse geo-datasets, departmental GIS's, and Computer Aided Drafting and Design related maps using a variety of vendor products. Each is in isolation from the others. This made finding and using the correct information difficult and time consuming.

Solution

Farallon's property review application streamlines access to parcel-related information and consolidates maps and many disparate but important parcel related datasets into a single web page.

Example results: an Assessor's office can now spend five minutes as opposed to 1 hour determining the most recent assessed value of taxable properties or two minutes instead of thirty generating building permits or ownership transfer documents.

Properties is the basic "business element" of a city

Properties or parcels are the most basic "business elements" in a County or City. Every day, planners, assessors, public works, fire, police, elections officials, school districts, and many other county/city personnel need access to parcel maps and related information such as addresses, related permits, maps, documents, tax rate areas, voter precincts, relation to flood zones and other natural hazards, etc.

A Property Review GIS improves the quality and accessibility of local government

Improving the quality, validity, and temporal currency of parcel maps is a critical and cost-effective way to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of local government. Farallon's property review application streamlines access to parcel-related information and consolidates maps and many disparate but important parcel related datasets into a single web page.

Farallon's property review application allows local governments to:

  • Organize data by natural relationships rather than by application use
  • Support distributed computing by many individuals or departments for sharing spatial data through a variety of different applications
  • Eliminate/reduce data replication and simplify data security necessary to provide data to several different departments and external non-County users
  • Assign ownership of data by user for operational purposes and allow departmental users to act as custodians of specific data layers in the interest of the organization.

The result is that departments experience more efficient operations, better management of county resources, streamlined tax collection, enhanced coordination between departments, and significantly improved service to the community. This reduces the cost of doing business and improves revenue flow to the County/City.

Reducing the time spent chasing down related information by letting users find their own information

Someone will call the county and will say their tax bill is wrong. And someone will then have to check and call the person back. Instead, citizens can do this online. The fact that people are visiting the City website for this information and not City Hall means that phone calls and foot traffic to the City Assessor's Office front desk will be reduced, approximately 30-40%. Using this more efficient means of information distribution means that staff resources can be re-allocated from staffing the phones and front counter to doing other tasks - greatly enhancing worker productivity.

Web consoles make property information available to those who need it

One common task for any assessor or public works office is reviewing land records information. Using a Lands Review web application, a staff member (with appropriate data and map access privileges) can search for a specific property by its address, ownership information, or unique property identifier. The application generates a map of the property with an orthophoto overlay and several summary tables of information showing the property ownership information, property specific zoning, land use information. Users can access raster subdivision maps, related land maps, and other documents related to property such as parcels, buildings, roads, street names, building numbers, text, dimension, pavement, building lines, veranda lines, zoning, flood plane lines, and merestone coordinates. The user could then access related documents via a hyperlink, or print the property review map and related report to a letter size document. The process is a cost-effective and efficient method to distribute spatial data and applications to all users inside your local government as well as to your citizens through the internet.

In addition, the GIS solution can identify properties using a specified set of size and land use (zoning type) criteria. You can perform queries using a combination of the following: minimum lot size, maximum lot size, land value, structure value, land use, and zoning.

  • Better track parcel information for more accurate valuations and faster appeals.
  • More quickly capture new parcels and assign Assessor's Parcel Numbers (APNs).
  • Speed up the issuance of building permits for developers and cities.
  • Automate tedious functions that were previously done manually
    • Automatic calculation of areas
    • Revision Block Automation
    • Map Output Automation
  • Provide easier access to parcel maps over the web or in customized applications
  • Utilize spatial queries, overlay functions and graphics of GIS

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