September 19 , 2007
ASLIB Minutes September 19, 2007
State Land Information Board Meeting Minutes
September 19, 2007
Eureka Springs, Arkansas
Members Present:
Tracy Moy
Russell Gibson
Phyllis Poché
Randy Everett
Bekki White
Mary Kay Sullivan
Dr Fred Limp (R Brian Culpepper, Proxy)
Members Not Present:
Robert Newell
Judge David Hudson
Dr. Rob Kissell
Yancey Reynolds
Earl Smith
AR Geographic Information Office:
Shelby Johnson
Guests:
Hanna Ford, AR Game and Fish Commission
Karen Bassett, Deputy Director AR Dept. of Environmental Quality (ADEQ)
Cynthia Ragan, GIS Coordinator, ADEQ
Bill Sneed, USGS
Randy Jones, First Electric, Former Board Member
Suzanne Wiley, Former Board Member
Doug Hanson, Arkansas Geological Survey
Jerry Clark, Arkansas Geological Survey
Elizabeth Bowen, Benton County
Agenda
Phyllis Poché, Chair, called meeting to order at 3:31pm
Approval of Minutes
Bekki White motioned to approve the meeting minutes of August 3, 2007. Tracy Moy seconded. There being no discussion, by unanimous vote minutes approved.
Approval of April minutes amended to reflect change under Claire Bailey named Chief Technical Officer to comply with Office of Management Budget Circular A87. Mary Kay Sullivan motioned, Russell Gibson seconded. There being no discussion by unanimous vote minutes approved.
Status of the ASLIB Local Government Board representatives’ appointments
Chair sent email correspondence regarding reappointments of Board members. Governor’s Office response was researching and interest of other candidates.
AGIO Report
Shelby provided an update on AGIO activities of late. The primary activity for Shelby and Learon during the interim period with short staff has been to continue GeoStor operations and to meet the minimum needs of the counties participating in the road centerline grant. He also reported the AGIO is complete with its administrative and physical transfer to the Department of Information Systems.
Shelby then provided a brief on Adrian Clark and Maria Baker including their backgrounds, expertise and the work they will be undertaking. Their initial assignments include the completion of AGIO quality control, standard assessment and evaluation of the road centerline files being sent by the counties which are completing their road centerline grant.
Old Business –
Road Centerline Grant Extension Crittenden, Greene & Saline counties.
Shelby provided a short update on the status in each of the three counties that required an extension to their grant delivery. He described that AGIO had taken additional measures working with the grant extension counties including first hand meetings, teleconference calls and increased status monitoring.
Crittenden County is working forward and their contractor is preparing the data to meet their deadline. Shelby met with the contractor at length in West Memphis to review their existing data and approach. Shelby stated he believed Crittenden County will be delivered on time and meet the standard.
In the case of Greene County the contractor was very close to completion and only required a short amount of time to complete. AGIO is confident that Greene County will be completed on time and meet the state standard.
In the case of Saline County the contractor is continuing work on the file. The draft file submitted needed additional work to both the spatial and attribute information. The contractor working on Saline County has added personnel resources to meet their proposed deadline and AGIO is confident they will meet both the deadline and the state standard.
New Business –
Road Centerline data development completing Arkansas
Shelby provided a detailed description of the status of the statewide road centerline data set. This included a description of the situation concerning the five counties remaining incomplete.
They include Calhoun, Newton and Izard counties these three counties remaining in Arkansas that do not have physical addressing or E9-1-1. Cleveland County which has physical addressing but no road centerline mapping and Faulkner County which has physical addressing but no county wide centerline data. The City of Conway, which is the Faulkner County seat has road centerline data created and maintained for Conway Corp. There was a data mapping effort in Faulkner County but the data county data has not been submitted to AGIO. Shelby stated he believed Faulkner County was eligible for the grant but did not apply.
In the case of Calhoun and Izard counties, Shelby stated he met with county officials in both those counties and they are very interested in pursuing the conversion to physical addressing and centerline mapping but they do not have the funds necessary to complete the projects alone. Shelby also met with Newton County. However the county officials were less optimistic about completing both physical address conversion and centerline mapping without complete state support.
Shelby closed the discussion stating the GIS Trust Fund had $223,000 in funding available and that AGIO recommended utilizing up to $200,000 of that reserve to accelerate the completion of centerlines in the remaining counties. This step would be in line with the Board’s priority data sets of centerlines, parcels and orthoimagery. The issue at hand is the AGIO does not believe this is enough funding to complete all the remaining counties.
Russell Gibson questioned what would the cost be? The response was that each county requiring physical address conversion and mapping could be up to $150,000 each. Then roughly $25,000 to $30,000 would be needed to complete Faulkner and Cleveland counties.
Bekki White questioned the feasibility of requesting General Improvement Funds in the next legislative session to finish the project. Shelby remarked the General Assembly did pass a General Improvement Bill that included $750,000 of appropriation but no funding was received during the last legislative session and so the mechanism is in place but not the funding.
The Board concluded the discussion with the following tasks assigned to AGIO:
1) Request the General Improvement funding through the Governor’s Office to complete the project;
2) Complete a detailed cost analysis of the remaining counties to refine the costs and report that to the Board.
Phyllis Poché stated the strategy moving forward would be to request the General Improvement funding, if that becomes available the Board will act, if the funding is not available then the board will study the refined costs and consider leveraging the GIS Trust fund to complete as many of the counties as money allowed. AGIO is to report the detailed costs analysis and General Improvement funding status back to the Board via email as soon as possible.
Designation of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality as the State Steward for the National Hydro Data (NHD) Set
Phyllis Poché acknowledged Bill Sneed, the USGS liaison, to present a brief presentation on the development and history of the NHD and additional background on each state designating a state steward for NHD.
Bill reported the following details to the Board.
The NHD was completed through a major investment by both U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The data set is based upon the 1:24000 scale USGS quad map series. Information built includes stream classification, location, other features such as reservoirs, ponds, lakes and the flow network of the stream data. The powerful data set allows both upstream and downstream analysis within a GIS. Moving forward the USGS proposed strategy is that data needed to be maintained over time and those users closest to the data are best suited to identify and report errors or improvements. Through this recognition they developed a national strategy whereby they would identify state based organizations that could act as the primary steward for the data in each state. These stewards would work with other local data users to identify and report errors based upon the state’s business needs with the data.
With that background Bill then explained that he partnered with the AGIO, and Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) to host a series of NHD workshops and training across the state. There were two series of workshops held, one for managers and one for GIS specialists. Over 60 personnel attended the workshops held in northwest and central Arkansas. Following these workshops ADEQ emerged as a logical state steward for NHD. Subsequent to that USGS and ADEQ jointly developed a Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate on NHD. This activity also included pilot project funding in the amount of $40,000 to study one cataloging unit and identify issues, challenges and use that result to prepare a feasibility report on ADEQ’s ability to fulfill the State NHD Stewardship role. Bill concluded by stating that at this point USGS supported the strategy for the State Land Information Board to designate the ADEQ as the State Steward for NHD.
Chairwoman Poché then recognized Karen Bassett, Deputy Director of ADEQ, to provide additional comments and background to the Board. Deputy Director Bassett described ADEQ’s intent to adopt NHD as the agency’s core data set that would serve as a backbone to all water related databases within the agency. It was their hope that if ADEQ served the leadership role that all other state agencies would also utilize NHD as the state’s common data set for water related information. To this end she requested that a working group be formed based upon a number of state stakeholders that could report their intent to use NHD. Board Member, Tracy Moy of the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission reported that her agency was using NHD and intending to continue using NHD. She believed several other agencies would as well. Board Member Bekki White remarked that her agency intended to use NHD and to cooperate with ADEQ on this data set but was concerned by the inclusion of water wells within the USGS & ADEQ Memorandum of Understanding. She stated this appeared to be a duplication of effort. Bill Sneed replied this was an oversight and that should be corrected. That NHD only referred to surface water features within the data.
Additional discussion followed which was brought to a close by the Chair who requested that AGIO work with Deputy Director Bassett to issue a letter to agency directors requesting they or their designee participate in a workgroup to identify what water data sets agencies were using. If not NHD, what measures would lead them to use NHD and what coordination could result? The agencies listed included Arkansas Geological Survey, Game & Fish Commission, Natural Resource Commission, Natural Heritage, Highway & Transportation, Environmental Quality, Emergency Management and…
Deputy Director Bassett and Shelby pledged to work together and report back to the Board.
Letter of Endorsement for the Rural GIS Program
Chairwoman Poché reported to the Board that Resource Geographic Information System (RGIS) program outreach coordinator Brian Culpepper had contacted her regarding a letter of endorsement for continuation of the program. This program supports a number of statewide GIS coordination activities within Arkansas and assists with GIS education and outreach. The Chair prepared a draft letter and requested the Board’s concurrence with sending the support letter. The Board responded with their support.
With no further business the Chair entertained a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn by Randy Everett, motioned seconded by Russell Gibson, with no discussion the motion passed. Meeting adjourned at 5:37pm
Next Board Meeting December 5, 2007 Location to be Determined
