Online Tax Maps and Phase I ESAs Paul R. Schiffer VP, Product Management, EDR EBA RMC Call January 28th, 2015

1. 1Copyright © 2015 EDR, All Rights Reserved.
Paul R. Schiffer
VP, Product Management, EDR
January 28th, 2015
Online Tax Maps and
Phase I ESAs

2. 2Copyright © 2015 EDR, All Rights Reserved.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTING PRACTICES
• Consultants report that ~25% of subject properties supplied by
their customers have poor location information
• Many consultants use municipal tax map information
• Conduct research on property location
• Define property boundaries for the site visit
• Define property features, such as acreage
• Define adjoining property locations
• For example, to comply with the ASTM standards on adjoining property

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• Originally, U.S. property was “granted” by some authority: a
monarchy, subsequent proprietors, towns, or the U.S. government
• Original colonies and grants before 1785 used “metes and bounds” surveys
• Characterized by running prose, describing movement from one “monument” to
the next along the ground, including the distance and angle between each
• With westward expansion, surveyors adopted the U.S. Rectangular Survey
System / Public Land Survey System (PLSS)
• Characterized by the Township / Range / Section descriptions
• Some western areas also used
systems based on French and
Spanish survey systems
• Detailed description
U.S. SURVEY SYSTEMS
Colored areas surveyed using rectangular PLSS

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• Land grants typically based on one of the two survey systems
• Property ownership rights were generally documented in text
• To this day, the legally binding definition of a real property
resides in the textual deed description
• Tax maps are not the legal definition of the
property or its boundaries. Tax map
data is “as obtained” not “as recorded”
• Any maps referenced in the deed text are
legally binding.
• The three major systems used by modern deeds
• Metes and Bounds (aka Course & Distance)
• PLSS / Rectangular (aka Fractional System)
• Block and Lot (urban areas)
PROPERTY OWNERSHIP
Deed with metes and bounds survey text

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• Property taxation has been driven at various times by Federal,
State and/or Local governments
• Assessors collected information on possessions
• Taxes were levied using lists, often sorted by person
• Historically, tax map usage has varied greatly by municipality
• Difficult to determine when mapping tax began,
except to visit each city
• Prior to the 1970s, its pretty murky
• Appendix to this document includes
news articles about tax map projects
HISTORY OF TAX MAPS
Andrew Jackson, Davidson County, TN, 1829. Tax bill: $66.75 (paid)
Robert Meeres, Boston, MA, 1648, reprint in 1881
NYC Tax map, 1968

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IMPROVEMENTS IN TAX ASSESSMENT
• In the 20th century, the quality of practice for property assessment
improved substantially
• Tax collection itself became a “professional” occupation with the
creation of the National Tax Association (1907) and International
Association of Tax Assessors (1934)
• Through the middle of the 20th Century, states emphasized fair and
equitable taxation
• Tax assessors were asked to represent properties on a map (often by law)
• Aerial photography allowed towns to improve the accuracy of legacy maps
• However, photography was not ortho-rectified, so resulting maps highly
inaccurate by today’s standards
• Until the advent of GIS tax maps, paper maps were rarely consulted and
likely did not lead to full transparency

7. 7Copyright © 2015 EDR, All Rights Reserved.
• Tax Parcel Maps are also known as Cadastral Maps
• Fiscal Cadaster: The totality of information on maps and in
records used to administer a property tax
• Modern map-based fiscal cadasters contain:
• Parcel boundaries in hardcopy or digital format
• Lists of parcels and building (including descriptions)
• Tax history
• Ownership information
• Numbering system marking each parcel as unique
MODERN TAX MAPS

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PARCEL NUMBERING SYSTEMS
• Numbering Systems
• Assessors Parcel Number (APN)
• Assessor's identification number (AIN)
• Property identification number (PIN)
• Parcel ID Number (PARID)
• Property account number
• Tax account number
• Sidwell number
• Tax Identification number (Tax ID)
• Borough, Block, Lot (BBL)
• Others
• e.g. “STRAP” in Lee County, FL; “AKPAR” in Chatham County, NC

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• Generally each digit points to a specific entity
• Example: Township, range, section, subdivision, parcel identifier
• Examples
• Lee County, FL: STRAP# 04-48-26-B2-00500.2700
• Monroe County, PA Parcel #: 02/113882 PIN# 02632000817630
• Systems vary by municipality
• Average Number of Digits: 12
• Minimum: 4 (e.g. Chatham, NC)
• Maximum: 30 (e.g. Calumet, WI)
PARCEL NUMBERING SYSTEMS
0
50
100
150
200
250
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Counties
Number of Digits in the Assessor Parcel Number
Results based on a study of
100,000,000 parcels
in 2000 counties

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COMPUTERIZING TAX ASSESSMENT
• Beginning in ~1970’s municipalities started using “CAMA”
• CAMA software (computerized assisted mass appraisal) helps to more easily
assess properties, track inventory and ownership, and send bills
• In 1990’s ESRI introduced PC-based GIS software
• A wave of digitation of legacy paper, mylar, and linen maps followed
• Scanning legacy hardcopy maps
• Overlaying scans on orthorectified aerials and street maps
• Other methods included following the coordinate geometry shown on maps
(COGO) or converting the legal descriptions
• Drivers included
• Desire for more accuracy in taxation (reassessments)
• Multiple municipal department uses (e.g. planning, zoning, engineering,
emergency services)
• EPA storm water requirements for separate sewage and runoff and the
resulting need to tax based on quantity of impermeable surface around a
property

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DIGITAL TAX MAPS
• ~85% of municipalities have digitized tax maps
• Areas with higher funding are more likely to be digital
• Most are managed locally, either at the town or county level
• Several states manage the data centrally
• Impacts of Digital Tax Maps
• Help bring together municipal departments such as engineering and planning
that formerly did not work well together
• Enable assessors to accurately locate, inventory, appraise property and thus
fairly distribute taxes
• When used with mass appraisal programs, the GIS can highlight geographic
areas of change for uniformity of measurements and tax models.
• Enable 911 and emergency services to precisely know incident location and
adjoining property locations. (e.g. through a printout or onboard computer
monitor)
• Support infrastructure studies (e.g. zoning overlays)

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DIGITAL TAX MAPS
• Accuracy ranges anywhere from 2 ft. to 30 ft.
• Depends on methods used and the expense the town is willing to bear
• Updates to property boundaries continue
• Towns may do themselves or outsource to specialists
• Data layers
• Municipal boundaries, zoning, soil types, flood plains, street centerlines,
crime scenes, airport influence areas, property boundaries, sales data,
ownership information, impermeable land such as parking lots, utilities,
vegetation and trees, sewer systems, parks, fences, sidewalks, manholes,
landfills, spillways, towers/antennas, hydrants, railroads, patio/deck, etc.

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ONLINE ACCESS
• Many municipalities provide online access
• Online access is usually free
• Reduces “counter activity” related to fulfilling requests
• Allows assessors to do their job, e.g. reassessment
• Types of access
• Multi-point access sites
• Unified Systems
• Limited access sites
• Extensive data sites
• Commercial providers serving municipalities (e.g. Vision in New England)

14. 14Copyright © 2015 EDR, All Rights Reserved.
PROVIDENCE, RI – MULTI-POINT ACCESS
Assessor Plat Maps from
Planning Dept.
PDF of Plat 82
Online Assessment Database by Vision
Providence Open Data Portal

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STATE OF MONTANA – UNIFIED SYSTEM
Montana Cadastral Mapping Project

16. 16Copyright © 2015 EDR, All Rights Reserved.
NEW YORK CITY, NY – KEYED TO BLOCK/LOT
Address  Block/Lot ConverterAddress  Block/Lot
NYC Dept. of Finance
Digital Tax Map

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ORANGE COUNTY, CA – LIMITED DATA
Tax Bill Lookup Form

18. 18Copyright © 2015 EDR, All Rights Reserved.
CLARK COUNTY, WA – EXTENSIVE DATA
Data Layers List
Data Viewer

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TIPS
• Use online search engines to find municipal sources
• Use keywords like GIS, Tax Assessor, Parcel Maps
• Poke around
• Sometimes information will be on two separate systems, both valid.
• Take your time
• Municipalities present the data to their own liking
• Key buttons and functions may be hard to find
• Some can be slow and unresponsive
• Study the site
• Not always clear what data is available or not
• Expect variability and difficulty to find the property
• Search tools are not necessarily high quality
• Be aware that the data may not be perfect
• Data update schedules vary (anywhere from days to many months)
• Property changes may not make it into the assessor database quickly

20. 20Copyright © 2015 EDR, All Rights Reserved.
RELATION TO ASTM E1527 AND AAI DEFINITIONS
• 20 years ago, ASTM E1527-93
described how to observe current and
historical uses of adjoining properties
during a site visit.
• In defining records review, ASTM
E1527-93 chose to use the term
“approximate minimum search distance”
instead of radius, precisely to indicate
searching from property boundary and
not radial searches.
• AAI is similar
E1527-93
E1527-93
U.S. EPA AAI Rule, 40 CFR Part 312

21. 21Copyright © 2015 EDR, All Rights Reserved.
THE FUTURE
• Data improvement
• Redrawing / Retracing property lines to improve accuracy
• Better tools to enable emergency services (e.g. ingress / egress photos from
oblique photography)
• 3D data to measure many types of objects and topography
• LiDAR, photogrammetric layers, and oblique aerial photography
• Building footprints, which are drawn through a combination of automated and
manually intensive work
• Increased geographic coverage and faster data updates
• Questions related to transparency vs. privacy
• In some municipalities, public offices are exempt from online inclusion
• Federal government continues to study a national tax parcel
system, but with little progress

22. 22Copyright © 2015 EDR, All Rights Reserved.
Paul R. Schiffer
Vice President, Product Management
EDR
6 Armstrong Road
Shelton, CT
pschiffer@edrnet.com
800-352-0050
THANK YOU

23. 23Copyright © 2015 EDR, All Rights Reserved.
Property tax maps are the tangible embodiment of the history and growth of the United States, taxation and
public policy, legal history and constitutional rights, finance and assessment, surveying techniques, and
geographic information systems.
If you would like to learn more, I recommend the following sources as a good starting point.
• Taxation
• History of Property Taxes in the United States, http://eh.net/encyclopedia/history-of-property-taxes-in-the-united-states/
• The Worst Tax?: A History of the Property Tax in America (Studies in Government & Public Policy) by Glenn W. Fisher
• Historical Tax Lists for Tennessee: http://www.tn.gov/tsla/history/county/taxlist.htm
• Assessor Parcel Number: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assessor%27s_parcel_number
• Tax Assessment Standards:
http://www.iaao.org/wcm/Resources/Publications_access/Technical_Standards/wmc/Resources_Content/Pubs/Technical_Standards
.aspx?hkey=93ba7851-659f-4d02-80a2-9a52ef21f995
• Surveying Systems
• Public Land Survey System
• Metes and Bounds System
• COGO
• Federal Studies and Documents
• Bureau of Land Management General Land Office Records
• The Feasibility of Developing a National Parcel Database: County Data Records Project Final Report, HUD, 2013
• Municipal Storm water: http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/npdes/stormwater/Municipal-Separate-Storm-Sewer-System-MS4-Main-
Page.cfm
SELECT REFERENCES

24. 24Copyright © 2015 EDR, All Rights Reserved.
• Organizations
• International Association of Assessing Officers
• National Tax Association
• Books
• The Zoning of America: Euclid v. Ambler (Landmark Law Cases and American Society) , Wolf, Michael Allan
• American Property: A History of How, Why, and What We Own , Banner, Stuart
• Who Owns the Sky?: The Struggle to Control Airspace from the Wright Brothers On , Banner, Stuart
• Interpreting Land Records , Wilson, Donald A.
• Dividing the Land: Early American Beginnings of Our Private Property Mosaic , Price, Edward T.
• Measuring America: How the United States Was Shaped By the Greatest Land Sale in History , Andro Linklater
• Businesses Consulted
• Business Process Solutions, LLC , http://www.bpsllc.net/
• Digital Map Products, http://www.digmap.com/
• Sanborn Map Company, http://www.sanborn.com/
• Surdex, http://www.surdex.com/
• Smart Data Strategies, Inc., http://www.sds-inc.com/
• Southland Business Strategies, LLC (Athens, GA) hankburnham@gmail.com
• Buonicore Partners, http://www.buonicorepartners.com/
• Boundary Solutions, http://www.boundarysolutions.com/
SELECT REFERENCES

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APPENDIX – NEWS ARTICLES