BANGOR, Maine — Thanks to a new Web wrinkle, business owners, citizens and anyone interested in Bangor can get a better view — part and parcel — of Bangor real estate.
It’s called a Web-based parcel map viewer and it allows visitors to the city’s website, www.bangormaine.gov, to search and view maps, overhead views and technical information on various properties with the click of a mouse.
Sean Gambrel, a geographic information specialist in Bangor’s engineering department who created the program, said it was surprisingly simple to set up.
“To be honest, we didn’t put a lot of resources into it because we didn’t have to. It was a pretty quick thing to put together,” said Gambrel. “The most time spent was on collating data.”
The parcel viewer is supported by Geographic Information Systems software and the city’s own geographic database. GIS differs from other digital mapping because it offers features that each come with their own tables of information. That allows for more thorough investigation and analysis for people who are searching for properties by address or property owner.
“Essentially, we’d been developing our parcel data for awhile,” he added. “We had some rough data we could use for ourselves to use for zoning and things like that. As we started filtering it, we thought there might be other uses for it.”
Not only have there been other uses, but other benefits as well.
It’s proving to be helpful to a lot of people from city employees to assessors, lawyers, residents and business owners who can all use it for a number of things.
“For a typical resident, it helps them see where the property lines fall, especially, if they want to put up a fence or something,” Gambrel explained.
While Gambrel cautions that these maps and views shouldn’t be treated as legally binding or official — they are assessing maps and not necessarily akin to the results of a land survey — they are constantly updated and always current.
“It’s not old data, and that’s why it’s more accurate than Google maps, which may not be updated as often as it could be,” he said. “This is a constantly updated system.”
The parcel viewer program, which debuted online Thursday, allows users to print customized maps. It will not only be a time-saver for users, but for city employees as well.
“Business owners and developers can get a better lay of the land, and it streamlines things for us, where people can now find answers for themselves without having to come into city hall to look over maps,” Gambrel said. “That should save a lot of staff time not having to go through as many as 160 maps.”
Just what Bangor needed to do.If you own land you should know the layout of it.
What about those looking to purchase a piece of land? Do you think it may be of some assistance in that manner? I have used this program and find it quite helpful.
Yes, it’s great to allow instantaneous anonymous access to this kind of data. But I’ve seen stuff being put online that goes even further because it includes some precise infrastructure data. You can turn the overlays on and off to create the view you want. I guess our federal homeland security geniuses are more interested in finding out what novels I read at a public library.
“It’s not old data, and that’s why it’s more accurate than Google maps”. Looks to be at least 3 or 4 years old.
I went on and used the map for a bit this afternoon. You’re right, the photos are a few years old, but the lines look like they’re right up-to-date.
I use Google Earth and Google Maps a lot in my work, and I know that they use the last round of photos that the state did back in 2003, which are not only older but also lower quality
I wonder how many land dispute calls this will turn up
This information is for basic property assessment only. The property lines that are actually shown in the GIS are most likely taken from the Bangor tax maps, which by no means are meant to accurately depict property lines. Relying on this information to erect a fence would be absolutely irresponsible and was incorrect for the gentleman in the article to say. Obtaining a boundary survey by a reputable surveying firm is the only way to accurately determine your property lines.
The guy says that its not a survey, just gives you an idea of where things are. If you go use the map, the welcome screen clearly says that this is not a survey.
As an aside – I recently put up a fence in my backyard. I called a surveyor to see what it would cost to locate one side lot line of my 1/8 acre in-town lot in the gridded portion of town. The estimate was over $1000, which I wasn’t going to pay for a $250 fence.
Instead, I went down to the assessing office, made a copy of their peper maps and used the dimensions (which come from the deeds or original plats, which ARE “legal record”, mind you), and measured down from the center of the road at end of the block. Then, most importalntly, I talked to my neighbor and made sure he was in agreement and went 6″ inside of that. Its quite possible that the fence is slightly on my neighbor’s land, and if he ever wants to pay over $1000 to verify that, I will gladly remove it. Point being that if you talk to a surveyor they will often tell you that everything needs surveyed, but sometimes its just not sensible.