Agenda - Council - 02/26/2002 - Laserfiche WebLink

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AUTHORIZATION TO ENTER INTO I GIS LICENSE AGREEMENT WITH ANOKA COUNTY By: Sylvia Frolik, Community Development Director and Community Development Assistant Megan Wald Background: As you may recall, in 2000 the City Council reallocated $45,000 in 1998 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds for the purpose of updating the City's Zoning and Subdivision Chapter of City Code to implement the new Comprehensive Plan. Work on the project did not commence until the summer of 2001 as it would have been premature to begin working on a new Zoning Chapter when the outcome of the Comprehensive Plan was still an unknown. To date we have approXimately $23,000 left of that $45,000 grant. The Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) distributes the CDBG funds and they are aggressively pursuing completion and closing out of all pre-2001 projects and funds. The City recently received written notice that HUD recaptured the $8,500 we had allocated for installation of ADA compliant pedestrian ramps at certain trail locations. HUD has indicated that they will also recapture any Zoning Chapter update funds not spent, by April 1, 2002. Observations: Staff has been meeting with Loren Gordon of Hoisington Koegler on a weekly basis and we have resumed the Chapter 9 subcommittee meetings. However, even at that rate we will not be able to spend $20,000 during the month of March. We will be able to utilize a lot more of the funds in March if we start working on the new zoning map. To do so, we need the basic parcel information from Anoka County. It is Staff's understanding that purchasing the basic parcel data from Anoka County without entering into a lease agreement would be very cost prohibitive and would not give us any rights to regular updates. Entering into a lease agreement with Anoka County would allow the City to obtain parcel information that is updated on a quarterly basis. The lease agreement states that Anoka County will invoice the City at a rate of $500.00 for the first year and $250.00 for every year after. The lease agreement is updated annually, at which time the City has the option to renew or terminate. The City of Ramsey is planning for and has budgeted funds towards establishing an in-house GIS system and capabilities. This license agreement with An0ka County is not buying into their system; it is giving us the rights to the parcel data base (and updates) we need to get our own system up and running in a cost effective manner. To that basic data base, we plan to complement the amount of information available on each parcel by entering other data such as zoning; building permits; presence of environmental features such as wetlands, flood zones, shorelands, woodlands; the existence of any conditional use permits, variances or rezonings on the parcel. The uses of the data will be numerous and we will also be able to produce our own maps. -221-