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Clay County Breaks Ground with Mobile Office

In August 2005, Clay County Assessor, Cathy Rinehart, gave her approval for county field appraisers to test a leading-edge GIS/CAMA-integrated application developed by Mobile Video. This application is referred to as Mobile Office, or Mobile “O” for short. When linked to the County’s TerraScan CAMA field application, Mobile “O” takes the office to the field and delivers the field back to the office. Preliminary results indicate appraisers are saving 20% of their time; one day in five! And that’s just the beginning. Once the long-range benefits of having all the data at the fingertips of field appraisers are realized, it will be possible to calculate fewer return trips, fewer miles driven and more equitable assessments resulting in fewer appeals.

A typical day starts with Residential Supervisor, Shelli Stryker, preparing a “to do” list referred to as an “index.” Properties are selected and coded according to the reason they’re being inspected. For example, sales validations, occupancy permits, building permits, etc., each have their own code which will be reflected in a different color on the Mobile “O” map screen.

For Field Appraisers like Dee Cluckey, there’s no need to locate maps, route maps, print property record cards or even carry a clipboard. All she needs is a tablet/PC, digital camera, and a GPS device that fits in her pocket.

For all 85,000 improved parcels in Clay County , Dee has the orthos, GIS parcel layer, CAMA data, sketches, existing street-view photos and the applications to run everything on a single tablet. That means, even though she is going to a particular part of the county to inspect selected properties, she can “check on” any property she encounters along the way. For example, should she wonder if an improvement was constructed without a building permit, she needs only to check the TerraScan CAMA record. If she wonders whether an improvement has been sketched correctly, she needs only to check the sketch in TerraScan, and re-sketch if necessary.

Before leaving an individual property or neighborhood, Dee is able to analyze the data on-site from her car. Whether she wants to make a change in the CAMA data and recalculate assessed value, or color the map based on a CAMA data element, like assessed value per square foot, the capability exists to locate outliers while still on location.

Should she need to leave the car to measure or interview the occupant, she simply unplugs the power supply and takes the lightweight tablet with her. It should be noted that the screen on the Fujitsu tablet Clay County selected displays in direct sunlight and, because the tablet is powered by the vehicle most of the time, low battery power is never a concern. Mobile Video’s Core Software at the desktop linking GIS to CAMA data is exactly the tool needed to maintain total quality management and quality control.

The Mobile “O” report writing feature allows field appraisers to focus on data collecting and appraising, as opposed to record keeping. According to Dee , this is the feature she likes best. As she returns to the office, the data on her tablet is uploaded to the server and the Mobile “O” report writer prints a production report. Beginning and ending times, number of miles driven, and number of minutes spent on each task (occupancy permits, sales validation, etc.) are all tabulated and printed for both her and her supervisor. As data is uploaded to the server, properties inspected and by whom and on what date are flagged, which allows Terry Campbell, Director of Real Estate, to review the data that was collected, the images that were taken and the appraised value set shortly after the field work was done.

Now that the Mobile “O”-linked-to-TerraScan field application is fully-tested and operational, it is being offered to other TerraScan CAMA system users, making it possible for field deputies to validate data and generate the most equitable values at the least possible cost per parcel. back to News >>