Cold calling for parcel data has never been so fun! In an effort to include everyone in this project, we are making a lot of phone calls, sending a lot of e-mails, and spending a lot of time talking about the project. And, surprisingly, it’s pretty fun.
So far, the response has been pretty positive. Here are some of the most common concerns voiced thus far:
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Increased work for counties to respond to our request — this concern has mostly been alleviated when we explain that we don’t want to add any more work to already overworked departments, thus are solely requesting data as it would normally be distributed to the public.
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Commercial use of list of names — This is a sticky subject for some counties. Luckily, since neither the statewide parcel database project nor the family forest database are using the parcel-related information for commercial purposes, this concern is less of a problem at this time. If the completed statewide parcel layer is to be shared with other members of the Parcel Framework Management Group, it may be necessary for each agency or cooperator to individually sign license agreements with the counties which require the agreements.
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Non-GIS data — We recognize that multiple counties in Washington do not currently have (or use) a GIS to store and manage parcel-related data. One of the goals of this project is to document parcel data producers’ current status in relation to GIS and to garner more support for counties to build, update, and maintain GIS data. In the event that a county does not have GIS, we have a method that can extract estimated location of the parcel to the Range or Section from the tabular data (Assessor’s tax rolls).
As of today, September 24, we have received data from 11 counties (although 2 of the counties are only partially received — meaning we either have the assessor’s data or the spatial data but not both). We are in the process of receiving data from 12 more counties and have either submitted data request forms or signed license agreement or are just waiting for the data to be uploaded or delivered. We are waiting to hear back from 13 counties regarding data acquisition and 5 counties still need to be contacted over the phone. As explained in an earlier post, we sent out initial e-mails to all 39 counties.
Back to the phone!