Creating an Assessment Tool for the County Assessor

Catherine Raney, GISP
Campbell County, WY
Gillette, NC

David Holdstock, GISP
Geographic Technologies Group
Goldsboro, NC

A primary industry in terms of land use for Campbell County, Wyoming is ranching. Another is coal mining, but that is a subject for another discussion. The Campbell County Tax Assessor expressed a desire to have a tool that would give percentages of soil types per individual parcel so he could have a more accurate way to value agricultural land according to use, producing more accurate assessments for his constituents. Taking the SSURGO soil polygons from NRCS as the beginning point, the database was populated with CAMA derived values for land uses such as Irrigated, Non-irrigated, and Dry Crop. The SSURGO polys were compared to aerial photography in use in the Assessor's office for decades to see how well the SSURGO polygons matched up with land use data used for assessments. Then the data was corrected and updated using current aerial photography. Now the Assessor has accurate and current data that he can use with confidence to value ag land throughout the county, an approximate area of 5,000 square miles.

Biography

Cathy Raney, GISP is the GIS Coordinator for Campbell County, Wyoming.  She has held this position for the past eight years, building an enterprise GIS from the bottom up.  Before that she held positions as GIS Technician and Draftsperson for the City of College Station in Texas, which is where she earned her degree in Environmental Design from Texas A & M University.

She has been passionate about GIS for 21 years, recognizing the power of the technology to enhance lives and produce time and money saving tools for staff and citizens alike.  Another thing that Cathy is passionate about is coordination and collaboration.  Which is why she was the volunteer representative to the National States Geographic Information Council from Wyoming for the last five years.  And why she is now the president of the newly formed professional organization for GIS in Wyoming, WyGEO.