GIS Outreach to Municipalities

Participants: MERI, Bergen County Municipalities: Carlstadt, East Rutherford, Little Ferry, Lyndhurst, Moonachie, North Arlington, Ridgefield, Rutherford, South Hackensack, Teterboro; and Hudson County Municipalities: Jersey City, Kearny, North Bergen and Secaucus.

The Municipal Assistance Program (MAP) is an initiative developed by the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (NJMC) to assist District municipalities. A component of this program is to transfer Geographical Information System (GIS) technology and pertinent geographic layers to participating municipalities. This program is administered through the Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute (MERI). District municipalities receive GIS infrastructure that includes current and relevant datasets. These datasets include: property boundaries, roads, land use, zoning, census data, municipal assets (i.e. utility related data) and aerial images. In addition, a comprehensive training program for municipal staff followed by technical support and refresher seminars is also part of the program. Services to municipalities under this MAP component include the following:

Services Provided	Parties Involved	Status
Development of custom ArcServer/web-mapping applications	MERI-GIS Group & member municipalities	GIS data layers are accessed through these web-mapping services – Version 1.0 has been released to District towns & will be trained continuously through 2010.
Feature class/data development	MERI-GIS Group & member municipalities	Data continuously updated – specifically, parcel & owner information (Owner information is up-to-date as of 2009)
GPSing of Municipal assets	MERI-GIS Group & member municipalities	The GIS Group and members of the Fleet Vehicle Division are capturing all municipal assets (i.e. catch basins, outfalls, manholes, etc.). The GIS Department is working on 2 pilot towns (East Rutherford & Secaucus) in assisting these municipalities in mapping critical utilities.
Training of Municipal Staff	MERI-GIS Group & member municipalities	All 13 towns have completed training to use the GIS tools provided by MERI – Jersey City will come on-line as soon as all data layers are complete

The GIS Group has been proactive with the member municipalities, specifically in the capture of critical data through the use of hand-held GPS units (shown below). For example, fire hydrants of a town can be mapped to show their location and integrity. Other projects that the GIS group has been been working on are assisting the Rutherford Shade Tree Committee and the Ridgefield Environmental Commission in inventoring their shade trees. This project will last through 2011.
In addition to the data collection and field work provided, an array of web applications are created for the municipalities to view geo-spatial information on the web. The data can be accessed through the following URL at http://meri.njmeadowlands.gov/GIS/maps.php.

The completion of each town’s data collection was divided into four phases:

Phase 1 – Carlstadt, Moonachie, Secaucus, Teterboro

Phase 2 – East Rutherford, Little Ferry, North Arlington, Ridgefield, Rutherford

Phase 3 – Kearny, Lyndhurst, North Bergen, South Hackensack

Phase 4 – Jersey City

Number of Towns completed as of October 2010: 14 Towns

Bergen County

Municipality	Phase Completed	Completed (Year)	GIS Complete		Training
					Municipal		ERIS
			Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	No
Carlstadt	Phase 1	2003	X		X		X
East Rutherford	Phase 2	2004/2005	X		X		X
Little Ferry	Phase 2	2004/2005	X		X		X
Lyndhurst	Phase 3	2006/2007	X		X		X
Moonachie	Phase 1	2003	X		X		X
North Arlington	Phase 2	2004/2005	X		X		X
Ridgefield	Phase 2	2004/2005	X		X		X
Rutherford	Phase 2	2004/2005	X		X		X
South Hackensack	Phase 3	2006/2007	X		X		X
Teterboro	Phase 1	2003	X		X		X

Hudson County

Municipality	Phase Completed	Completed (Year)	GIS Complete		Training
					Municipal		ERIS
			Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	No
Jersey City	Phase 4	2010	X			X		X
Kearny	Phase 3	2006/2007	X		X		X
North Bergen	Phase 3	2006/2007	X		X		X
Secaucus	Phase 1	2003	X		X		X