Municipality: Town of Plattekill

Project Description:
The program started 6 years ago when the Towns of Lloyd, Marlboro and Plattekill applied jointly for a GIS Feasibility Study Grant from the State Archives and Records Administration (SARA). They hired a consultant and Plattekill provided some in-house expertise in GIS as well. Plattekill concentrated its GIS development on zoning, wetland, and property use data, which was used in the creation of the Town’s master plan. They secured much of their data from Ulster County, and hydrology data from the NYS State Data Sharing Cooperative. Some GIS training was provided by the consultant. Most of the training however came from the Ulster County training program which is free and managed by the Environmental Management Council (EMC).

Program Status and Schedule:
The program is up and running and is overseen by the part time Assessor who is also the full time GIS Coordinator.

Barriers and Impediments/How Overcome:
The length of time it took to get the program running–5 years, was a problem. Also, expanding and maintaining the data is a burden on the time of the full time GIS coordinator who is also the part-time Assessor for Plattekill and New Paltz. Other experienced in-house users relieved some of this burden.

Resources and Funding Sources:
The county with its training and data sharing programs was a great resource as well as the State Data Sharing Cooperative. SARA provided funding opportunities.

Involved Agencies:
Agencies involved were NYS State Data Sharing Coorperative, Towns of Lloyd and Marlboro, and the Ulster County EMC

Supporting Parties:
Support came from the Town leadership, the County, Towns of Lloyd and Marlboro, and the three Plattekill employees who had expertise in GIS.

Benefits to Community/Cost Savings etc.:
The EMC training program requires that a team comprised of the local government GIS person, a student, and a secondary school faculty member, take the training together. Classrooms are comprised of these teams of three. This is of great benefit to the academic as well as the local government communities and expands the resource base. The GIS data was also an effective time saving tool for the town in its efforts to build a master plan. Consistency, compatibility in programming and data among users, i.e. in-house and between the other two communities, created a compatible users environment.

Program Costs: Not available

Member of Data Sharing Cooperative: yes

Collaborative Effort:
Initial development of the program was undertaken by the three Towns who applied for the SARA funding for a feasibility study and also shared in the purchase of a plotter. Ulster County provided training in ArcView.

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