Before tonight's informational meeting on the Draft Comprehensive Plan, I asked George Frantz, the planner, why the GIS versions of the maps weren't available. He said he's not allowed to redistribute maps made by Tompkins County. I said a lot of it was available on the Web, and I was mostly right, but not completely.
There's a lot available directly from the GIS department, no questions asked, but it's not the road maps, town boundaries, or tax maps. Most of the maps I've been playing with have been ones from CUGIR, Cornell's immense library of GIS resources for New York State. Census maps provide boundaries, roads, and a lot more. The one tax map I'd been playing with is PDF, not a separate drawing layer. Workable, though inconvenient, especially as Dryden has lots of tax maps.
The one piece that I'm really missing for comparison with the draft plan's maps is the tax maps (no need for ownership information) - guess I'll have to ask about getting those. I'm not entirely sure why they post material in PDF without corresponding GIS work files. Most people are fine with PDF, I guess.
Update: To correct myself yet again, the information is available, though it's through the CUGIR site (click on Tompkins, and then scroll down the list), not directly through the county office. The tax parcel map for the whole county is especially impressive.
Posted by simonstl at December 18, 2003 10:36 PM