Wasco County approves small-enterprise agreement with Esri; staff outlines long-term ‘magic button’ GIS goal

Wasco County commissioners unanimously approved a small-enterprise agreement with Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., during their meeting, agreeing to continue the county’s relationship with Esri for mapping and geographic-information-system tools.

County staff described the contract as a continuation of technical support and a step toward better public access to property information through the county’s web map. “The goal is we wanna get to one magic button that is one step,” a county staff presenter, Andrew, said, describing an intended workflow in which a user clicking a parcel on the county web map would instantly retrieve assessment and tax information without visiting separate portals.

The presenter said work remains on the back-end to connect disparate property identifiers that date from years before digital systems were designed. Staff warned the integration is complex and likely years away: “It’s not gonna happen anytime soon,” one commissioner said after staff described both progress and remaining obstacles.

The motion to approve the Esri small-enterprise agreement was moved and seconded on the record and carried by a unanimous voice vote, with the chair voting yes.

County officials did not provide a contract amount or a binding timeline for the “magic button” integration at the meeting. Staff said current capability allows copying a tax-lot ID from the Esri map and manually entering it in the assessor’s portal, a two-step process they hope to reduce to one click.

The agreement approved at the meeting covers software access and support; it does not itself create the single-click integration. Staff said additional technical work and data clean-up will be necessary to achieve that user experience.

Commissioners recessed the regular meeting after the vote and moved to the library district portion of the agenda.