County mapping information now online

By Stan Matthews
County Communications Program Manager

Public workshops on use to be held Aug. 20 and 28

Last week, the San Juan County Public Works Department announced Polaris and its first Internet mapping application called Polaris Express.

The Geographic Information Systems(GIS) Team has designed Polaris to become the one-stop-shop for both County staff and the public to obtain information from various County departments and other agencies.

The first interactive map to be released is called Polaris Express and is meant to be the fastest and easiest of the Polaris maps.

Polaris Express contains the following data layers:

• June 2008 aerial photographs
• Legal parcels and tax parcels
• Buildings (addresses)
• Driveways
• Roads
• Town of Friday Harbor boundary and building footprints
• Lakes
• Ferry routes and terminals
• Digital elevation model and hillshade

Functionality:

Besides the basic panning and zooming tools, Polaris Express also enables the user to:

• Search by address, parcel, road, or island
• Specify a scale (1:1200) or choose from pre-selected scales
• Identify all layers and information present at a given location (instead of just parcel information)
• Obtain the coordinates of any point desired in decimal degrees, degrees minutes seconds, or state plane
• Measure a distance and area in a variety of units
• Draw or make notes on the map using mark up tools
• Save a map extent (including mark ups) and e-mail the link to a friend
• Print the map using a specified map title in either landscape or portrait

Additional data layers and tools will be continually added to Polaris.  For example, a new property search application will be released in the coming months and will contain document search capabilities as well as more tax and property information than is currently available on the Assessor’s Parcel Search.

Other interactive mapping applications planned for future release include habitats; land use and environmental health (wells, septic systems, etc.); public lands and trails; election boundaries; hydrography and unstable slopes; and emergency response information (i.e. evacuation routes, helicopter landing zones, etc).

Training:

The GIS Team will host the follow training seminars on how to use Polaris Express:

Thursday, August 20:

• County Staff Only: 10 a.m. in Council Hearing Room
• Open to Public: 2 p.m. in Council Hearing Room

Friday, August 28:

• Open to Public: 10 a.m. in Council Hearing Room
• County Staff Only: 2 p.m. in Council Hearing Room

Polaris is accessible at: https://www.sjcgis.org/ or by clicking on “Polaris Mapping Application” on the County website.