Kalkaska County in Kalkaska

TYPE OF GRANT
Capital Grant

AWARDED
Fall, 2009 – $25,000 grant, development of a Geographic Information System (GIS)

TOTAL LEVERAGE
Original Rotary Charities grant was matched with another directly leveraged $25,000 contributed by Kalkaska county and village, as well as ten of the county’s 12 townships.  Land Information Access (LIAA) of Traverse City also awarded a grant as part of their Partnerships for Change program.  The county then scanned hundreds of paper parcel maps, which in turn were digitized by LIAA and converted to digital GIS layers by GIS Specialist Paul Riess.  Today, the Kalkaska County website offers a 24/7 online information resource for land-use planning and management.  Training made possible by the Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation provided a series of hands-on workshops.  These were free and open to the general public and local officials.

SUMMARY
Collaboration with LIAA was key to the success of developing the county GIS system.  In addition to digitizing files and hosting the website, LIAA designed and facilitated the public workshops.  The new mapping tools are now available online at www.kalkaskacounty.net.

COMMUNITY NEED
One of the few counties in Michigan without a digitized mapping program, Kalkaska was a perfect candidate for the online technology.  And although invaluable for county, township and Kalkaska governmental staff and officials, one of the biggest benefits of the new GIS service is the parcel data it provides county residents and the general public on a round-the-clock basis.  Sharon Zakrajsek, director of the county’s equalization department, notes that citizens now print parcels from the website and visit her office with specific questions.  “The potential for numerous varieties of layers of property information is almost endless.”

 

 Sharon Zakrajsek, Director of the Kalkaska County Equalization Department

 

 

 

 

 

“What I see….”

“We had no idea of the use GIS would experience on the county’s website.  We knew realtors, title company staff, township officials and the like would access it.  But now, if the system is even down for a few minutes, our office is flooded with calls, many of which are from private users of the site.

“Townships utilize it the most for state compliance issues like land value mapping.  Before GIS, assessors used to hand color plat images.  With GIS, that’s all changed.

“We see only increased use of GIS as people become aware of its existence.  We’ve promoted it by word of mouth, with our local realtors, title and assessor community, and our local newspaper, the Leader and Kalkaskian, has run several articles about it.”