Press Release Archives
For Immediate Release
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Media Contact:
Karen Fouts, CMS
Marketing Manager
kfouts@sidwellco.com
St. Charles, IL – In order to meet North Dakota’s new state-mandated agricultural assessment standards, Grand Forks County, North Dakota, has selected The Sidwell Company to provide professional GIS services to aid the jurisdiction’s assessment officials in the task of efficiently calculating soils valuations for agricultural tax parcels. The company will prepare existing soils files for use in performing countywide soils computations on agricultural parcels and assist Grand Forks County in arriving at assessed valuations by employing Sidwell’s Farmland Assessment and Report Management System (FARMS™). One distinctive advantage of this ArcGIS®-compliant software solution for agricultural tax assessment is the ease with which the generated data can be exported to various formats for the purposes of complete system integration. Additional features of the software module include being able to set up user-defined tolerances for easily identifying discrepancies between assessed and measured acreages, the ability to then “normalize” these acreage discrepancies, and the capabilities to create customized thematic maps for presentation, set spot symbol placements and record related comments for each parcel. The county will also receive a customized enhancement to the FARMS module, which will be developed by modifying the overlay and reporting functions of the base FARMS application to enable creation of an additional, distinct modifier layer that is unique to North Dakota farmland assessment.
In addition, Sidwell will provide to Grand Forks County on-site, specialized training that focuses on the use of the FARMS™ software extension within ArcGIS® 9.3, covering basic operations for processing agricultural parcels, all processing tools and reporting features of the system, and the different user customizations that are available within the reporting application. To help control implementation costs for this project, Sidwell will install the FARMS™ software remotely and follow up with further on-site configuration of the module.
Traill County, ND also recently selected Sidwell to provide similar agricultural assessments, soils computations, and FARMS installation and training services. Other North Dakota counties that have previously chosen the company’s agricultural assessment solution include, Eddy, Foster, Kidder, Ramsey and Towner. Sidwell continues to work closely with local assessment officials to ensure that all formulas, calculations and reports generated by the FARMS software remain compliant with agricultural assessment standards set by the state of North Dakota.
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About Sidwell
The Sidwell Company is an employee-owned firm providing integrated land records management solutions and GIS mapping and software development to local government and private-sector entities across the country. Sidwell’s FARMS™ solution, currently used by over 140 customers nationwide, is a mature, robust GIS-based application developed and designed by the company for use in the creation, analysis and reporting of datasets related to agricultural real estate assessment. Sidwell also offers in-house aerial photography and photogrammetric services, and is the Midwest Distributor for Magellan™ GPS products and solutions. For more information about FARMS, Parcel Builder™ (a premier parcel mapping solution), Magellan, and Sidwell’s numerous other land record management and GIS solutions, call 877.SIDWELL (877.743.9355) or visit www.sidwellco.com.
About ESRI
ESRI and ArcGIS 9.3 are licensed trademarks of ESRI. For more information about GIS industry leader ESRI, contact the company at 800.GIS.XPRT (800.447.9778) or visit them on the web at www.esri.com.
Tags: ArcGIS, ESRI, GIS Project, GIS Services, Magellan, Parcel Builder, Sidwell
