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Land Ownership Split Tracking Feasibility Report The Zoning and Natural Resources Committee has asked for an estimate of the time and effort required to develop an information system to track splits in land ownership. The following report briefly discusses the purpose of the system,its required and optional components,and a timeline for completion of the project using existing resources from the LIO staff. Purpose of the System The County board,via its Zoning and Natural Resources Committee(ZNRC), is required to approve requests to change the zoning of most property outside city and village limits. Many townships in Dane County adopted agricultural exclusive zoning during the period of 1979 to 1983. If the ZNRC approves a request to change zoning, it must then be adopted by the County Board and approved by the County Executive. Any or all of these decision making entities is often interested in how many times a particular land owner has changed the zoning of any of their property since the township adopted agricultural exclusive zoning. The Department of Planning and Development has been identified as the lead agency in making this determination. Staff from Planning and Development will research a variety of documents and information systems and will assemble a document detailing the history of land ownership for all land owned by a zoning change petitioner since the adoption of agricultural exclusive zoning. Planning and development staff will need a efficient method to research and store this information. Components of the system A database detailing all tax parcels owned at any time during the period of interest will be established.Parcel acreage,changes to the boundaries of the parcel,changes to zoning,the dates that any changes to ownership or zoning occurred,and any other relevant information will be input by the system user. The database will be defined in a standard format suitable for attachment to the Arcview mapping system,as well as for viewing using royalty free software. Database viewing software will allow searching by owner name or parcel number and will display all tabular information compiled by the system user. A map of the lands as held in the year of adoption of agricultural exclusive zoning,or of the year acquired will be developed. This map will begin with current land ownership and will be modified by the system user to reflect changes made in the past. The results will be stored as separate map files,and can be updated as changes occur over time. Color plots will be available using plotters on the Dane County computer network. Black and white plots can be created using a standard office laser printer An interface will be developed for extracting existing digital maps,manipulating map boundaries to reflect previous ownership and zoning,and entering database information. A map viewing interface for staff and municipal government users licensed for Arcview 2 software will also be developed. A royalty free version for viewing the database and possibly an image of the maps is also planned. Optional Components Updates to other information systems such as the grantee/grantor index,the tax listing database,the survey index, and other land information systems may also be included in the project depending on cost effectiveness and technical feasibility. The purpose of these updates will be to improve the efficiency of research into past ownership changes. Project Timeline The project is estimated to take approximately 500 hours of staff time. Current Land Information Office project plans provide for approximately 10 to 15 hours per week for small system development. This would require almost one year to complete the project,with the highest need portions of the project completed in 6 months. Acceleration of the project is possible by adjusting existing priorities or by contracting the work out. Prepared by John Amundson 12/16/96. Revised 1/6/97