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New aerial map offers city residents, employees new view

Scott Swanson

Of The New Era

Ever wanted to see what your house looks like from on high?

The city of Sweet Home’s aerial map can give you just that kind of view.

The aerial base map, a photograph that shows the entire city in fairly acute detail, was authorized last winter by the City Council, which authorized city staff to pay $54,600 for it. When the project is completed, the computerized map will allow city employees to isolate specific points in the city and instantly know how deep and where water, gas and sewer lines are located.

Plus, they can see Geographic Information Sytem (GIS) overlays that show the city’s comprehensive plan, zoning, flood plains, geohazard areas, surveys, centerlines and more.

“You can take a cursor, click on something with a little measuring thing, and it will all be integrated like that, versus an aerial photograph,” said City Manager Craig Martin. “People say, ‘Why don’t you just use Google Earth?’ Google Earth doesn’t have this kind of detail.”

The map is available to all the city employees, but will be particularly useful to the Community Development (Planning), Police, and Public Works departments. Residents can access it by logging on to the county Web site at http://www.co.linn.or.us/webmap/ELLAMaps1.0run.htm.

“I love it,” said Planning Director Carol Lewis. “It’s amazing, the number of different ways property owners and potential property owners can use the information we give them.”

Lewis said the sytem can be effective in arguments over, say, dumping of garbage by showing property owners exactly where their boundaries are.

“Neighborhood disputes are sometimes more easily resolved with aerial photos than with attorneys,” she said.”

The map has been placed on the county’s Web site, but it belongs to the city.

Martin said the quality is better than anything the county or city had before.

“The resolution what we’re looking at,” he said as he scrolled over the city on his computer. “It’s better than the county’s.”

City Engineer Joe Graybill said that resolution is due to the fact the photos were shot from an elevation of 3,600 feet.

“The higher you go, the less resolution you have on the ground,” he said.

Graybill said the map’s resolution is half an inch per pixel. County maps the city was previously using were 2 feet per pixel.

He said that his department can use the maps to determine the location of impervious surfaces – roofs and pavement, manholes, water systems and other infrastructure.

“It’s really good for working with streets,” he said. “You can actually see where the edge of the streets are, and where sidewalks are or are not – since about half the city doesn’t have sidewalks.

“It’s helpful for background information on project drawings because people can relate to photos much more than line drawings.”

Public Works Director Mike Adams said the system “gives us an updated picture of what’s happening within the community as far as building is concerned.”

“It’s an updated version,” he said. “What we had before was a number of years old. We should be doing this fairly regularly.”

Graybill said the last set of photos the city had were from “1993 or ’94,” but they were analog pictures, not digital, so they could not be reproduced.

Martin said that future updates, which are planned every four years, will cost about $4,000 a year now that the basic computer programming is completed.

“The big expense was to get it integrated,” he said.

Lewis said the city’s growth requires more regular updates.

“As fast as we growing right now, we don’t have ability to help people as much if we don’t have all the structures on there,” she said. “Five years ago, the number of (current) structures and roads not on the map is pretty astounding.”

Lewis said the map is part of a conscious effort by the city to promote economic development.

“When someone walks into our office, they want us to tell them everything they want to know,” she said. “This is the tool that enables us to do that.”

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