Pottsville City Administrator Thomas A. Palamar said he's come to rely on the county's online map where he can look up properties, their histories and their owners.
"It's a good resource for us. We use it pretty regularly. I'm sure somebody at City Hall uses the Schuylkill Parcel Locator every day, and some use it multiple times. With our blight fight, we've been using it quite a bit, inquiring about the ownership of properties. Our code enforcement people use it quite a bit," Palamar said Monday.
Since November 2004, when it went online, the Schuylkill Parcel Locator has been giving the public insights into "approximately 90,000 parcels" in the county, according to Susan A. Smith, the county's Graphic Information System coordinator. And, according to Smith and Lisa Mahal, county engineer and the real estate director, county officials are considering major upgrades to it, considering recent problems with the system.
"The parcel locator was originally put online to be able to get good information out to the public in a more accessible way. That app has been running for about 10 years. It's had very rare and intermittent issues, with the exception of the past two weeks," Smith said.
In recent weeks, the geographic information system at co.schuylkill.pa.us/parcelviewer has been experiencing problems, sometimes freezing up. Smith has made that known on the home page:
"Due to known, ongoing issues with the Parcel Locator, the services which run the Parcel Locator will be automatically refreshed every 15 minutes (on the hour, quarter after, half hour and three-quarter hour). This refresh typically takes less than 1 minute to complete but during that time, you will find the Parcel Locator unavailable. Your session may also be interrupted during the refresh. Occasionally, you may also find the Parcel Locator unresponsive ("SEARCHING DATA"), we ask you to wait for the refresh to be completed."
There's a "short-term fix," Smith said. Two alternate links have been listed on the home page to allow the public to access CAMA (Computer-Assisted Mass Appraisal) Cards and Parcel Maps.
There's a "long-term fix" in the works, and county officials aren't sure how long this will take to develop, Mahal said.
"Within the next two or three weeks, we'll get some recommendations. We're working toward a long-term solution," Smith said.
Representatives of GeographIT, Lancaster, a GIS and information technology firm, are expected to visit the courthouse in the next week or two to inspect the hardware and software which keep the parcel locator running.
The county has been contracting services from GeographIT since 2010, Smith said.
"The first piece they have to look at is all the infrastructure, the hardware and software. It's up in the computer room here at the courthouse. We have a server room here," Smith said.
Smith was not sure when GeographIT will submit its recommendations.
"But they'll make recommendations and we'll have to make some decisions from there," Smith said.
"We have a team and those recommendations will be discussed with IT and our county administration. They'll look at the cost and we'll pick and choose what's best," Mahal said.
Mahal said she believes the system needs "an overhaul."
It could include hardware and software upgrades, Smith said.
"And maybe some additional programming. And some of those upgrades we can do in-house. Our IT department can do those. We might have to make some purchases," Smith said.
In 1995, the county conducted a tax parcel reassessment. In 1996, the county converted paper maps to computer desktop mapping, and established assessment public access terminals, according to Smith.
In 1999, the county established a GIS office, hired a GIS coordinator and set up GIS public access workstations, according to Smith.
In 2003, the county took steps for further build its e-government capabilities. These included signing a contract with RETTEW Associates to help develop the parcel locator.
"It was a custom-built product and it uses typical web-page programming. We contracted with RETTEW," Smith said.
Smith said she can't tell how many visitors it receives per day.
"But I can tell you that on average the site receives approximately 960 requests for searches per day," she said.
These are requests to find parcels, using either tax ID numbers or keywords or links on the parcel locator's map, Smith said.
Smith wasn't able to break down exactly how much to run the parcel locator, but she provide insights.
"On an annual basis, the county spends $13,000 for the ArcGIS Server License with ESRI. And that ArcGIS Server License is used by the county for more than the parcel locator. In addition, the Planning/GIS Department pays an annual maintenance fee with Dell for approximately $4,000 for both the data server and the application servers. Again, these servers are used by and for more than just the parcel locator but the parcel locator does reside on these servers," Smith said.