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S~tep 2 ..... Determine the Distribution Within the City of_the' "Fiscal Factors", The basis for determining the distribution of the "fiscal factors" was the individual land parcel. Therefore, the two keys to developing the data base were the assessor's file and a digitized parcel base map. Other data and maps were related to these two key components to build the file. The collection method, components and uses of the data file are described below. Assessor's Data File A computer tape file of assessor's data for the City was re- quested and obtained from Anoka County. Since the use of assessor's data for planning purposes was a relatively unknown practice, the Council staff initially met with some re- luctance to provide the data. Competing demands on the County's data processing staff also put the Council's request in relatively low priority. Finally, there were legal ques- tions over the proprietary rights of the County's computer sys- tem vendor that also delayed obtaining the data. These prob- lems were resolved by having the County provide simply a "dump" of the County tax roll print records on computer tape. The Council's programming staff had the task of designing pro- grams to search for key words in the file like "general taxes" or "assessed value" and extract the appropriate data associated with those words. What began as a one million re- cord file was condensed down into 70,000 records of about 400 characters each, representing each land parcel in the County. The data items extracted from the file included: - parcel identification number to relate the file to the digitized map - property taxes and special assessments - owner's name - parcel address - land, machinery and building market values - assessed value - taxable land use - tax credits Another data item that could be determined by relatively simple manipulations of the data was existing land use, deter- mined by using the over thirty different taxable use codes of the Minnesota property tax system and aggregating them to about fifteen. Properties with no buildings or machinery were also recoded as "vacant." Parcel Base MaD ~he Minnesota Land Management Center (LMIC) prepared the digi- tized parcel base map for the City from seventy "half-section" maps of the parcels obtained from the County Surveyor's office. Since there are over 10,000 parcels in Blaine, some aggregation of the parcels was done to simplify the digitizing. Small, single-family residential lots within a