Building and managing a tax parcel geodatabase is an important part of many local government GIS programs. A tax parcel geodatabase allows you to spatially enable assessment and tax information contained in your local computer aided mass appraisal system; and it serves as a reference layer for land use, utility and other themes of geographic information in your community.

This blog entry provides an introduction to the Tax Parcel Template geodatabase and following blog entries will explain how to get your data loaded for use in ArcGIS. The Tax Parcel Template geodatabase provides you with the schema of the database used for the Tax Parcel Value Analysis Dashboard, the Tax Parcel Editing Template, and the Tax Parcel Viewer that are downloadable from the Template Gallery on the Resource Center.

In the future, we’ll add additional information and advice on data loading, but we’d like to hear more about the issues you’re having with data loading. Send us your comments and feedback (ArcGISTeamLandRecords@esri.com); we’d really like to help.

The Tax Parcel Template geodatabase contains a sample dataset provided by Bloomfield Township, Michigan. We would like to thank them again for allowing us to include a sample of their data in the Tax Parcel Template downloads. You should know that during the course of developing the Templates, we took a copy of their data at a point in time and added additional content. As a result, the data in the template downloads does not reflect real conditions in Bloomfield Township. That may be obvious to many, but we wanted to clarify that for people who are just getting started.

When you take a closer look at this data model, you’ll notice we’ve implemented a few design standards that reflect our experiences implementing industry-specific geodatabase models. These standards include:

·         Feature class table names are singular.

·         Uppercase, short field names to ensure that field names are not altered/truncated when moved between different database platforms and shapefiles (yes, shapefiles are still being used for data exchange)

·         Longer, more meaningful alias names on fields

·         Descriptions on fields and feature classes (FGDC stored as FGDC metadata)

Here is an example of those standards in action:

Feature Class

Field Name

Alias

Description

TaxParcel

PARCELID

Parcel Identification Number

The tax parcel identification number used to uniquely identify real property on the tax roll

TaxParcelPublishing

LNDVALUE

Land Value

The value of land without improvements

 

So let’s dive in now and take a closer look at the tax parcel geodatabase. The Sample.gdb provided with the Tax Parcel Templates has four main parts:

Sample Geodatabase Contents

Basemap – Land base data typically acquired from other organizations.

Cadastral Reference – Survey framework data that serves as a reference for parcel information.

Tax Parcels – Boundaries, subdivisions, lots, tax parcels and other data relevant to tax parcel inventories.

Assessment Information - Sales, foreclosures, taxing districts and other information used by local assessors.

Once you’ve had a chance to review the Sample.gdb, download the Parcel Data Model Template from the Land Records Resource Center. This template contains an empty Tax Parcel geodatabase schema; which is a much easier place for you to start if you’re ready to begin loading your data.

See the blog entries soon to follow for details on preparing the template to accept your data and on loading data into the datasets within the template.

The ArcGIS Land Records Team