GIS Cooperative Meeting

City of Tucson - Information Technology

Friday May 11, 2001

10:00 AM - Noon

Present: Donald Ijams, Dave Hochede, Anna Sanchez, Kristi Jenkins, Ves Zinn, John Keefer, Russell Riblett, Larry Cassen, Fran LaSalla, Linda Lopez and Andy Steuart

CityScan Project Update

Dave Hochede, Ves Zinn and John Keefer described various activities in the CityScan development process. Establishment of the development platform continues to occupy much of their effort. ArcSDE is being fine-tuned and a link with the City's central GIS database server is being developed.

A good progress review meeting was held at City I.T on May 8 among Hochede, Zinn, Keefer and Ijams. The next iteration of the prototype interface was reviewed, and extended discussion of the master address database concept and its relationship to CityScan took place.

GIS Training - Basic GIS Concepts Course

Forty five Cooperative members and guests attended the first session of the Basic GIS Concepts class held in the IT Pueblo room on April 19. Steve Whitney presented the three hour course to the crowd using a PowerPoint presentation and handouts as training aides.

Course evaluations were received from 38 attendees. Most of the evaluation were quite positive, with many people offering constructive ideas for improvement. Presentation of the next version of the course will be scheduled during the summer, as soon as possible, given the level of interest still evident.

GIS-Related Visual Basic for Applications Training

The first of two classes sponsored by the Cooperative, held April 23, 25 and 27, emphasized programming fundamentals using MS Access VBA. The course, taught in the City I.T. computer training room by Mr. Frank Bohac, was well received by the 12 students. The second class will focus on the ESRI ArcGIS object model and related VB programming processes. The second class will be held from 9 AM until 4:30 PM on May 21-25.

GIS Budget Adjustments and Expenditures

ArcView upgrades to Ver. 8.1 and 10 new copies of ArcView 3.2a are still in the purchase process. Consulting work with Veridian continues, in direct support of CityScan development.

End of the fiscal year budget adjustments were described during the meeting, including the intention to carry forward funds to cover five GIS Cooperative sponsored trips to the July 9-13 ESRI User Conference in San Diego. Some of the funds related to consulting will also be carried forward into FY 2001-02.

Next Fiscal Year

The GIS Cooperative will finish its second year of existence in October 2001. A discussion of accomplishments and directions for next year took place. Declining meeting attendance was noted and meeting content was examined. New ideas for next year included the possibility of a map gallery showing Cooperative members' work.

GIS-related training needs require constant attention and work toward a more extended, enterprise-focused GIS was discussed. Shorter meetings, still held monthly (except for the summer) were suggested. Continued development of CityScan and diffusion of its services into City government and into the community were seen as emphasis points for next year.

Core Issues

Offline reports from Jack Avis and Steve Whitney were considered. Jack sent information regarding the continuing address scrubbing he and his staff are pursuing. A significant number of anomalies are being rectified with the official address data set, particularly involving its relationship to the street network file.

Steve sent information relating to the redistricting work his group continues to do, and how the staff work that remains on the rubber-sheeting project (base layers moved to better align with orthophotos) will follow when time allows.

Other Business

The next GIS Cooperative meeting will be held on the second Friday of August, August 11, 2001. The meeting will be shortened to 90 minutes as a way to begin the process of appealing to more members.