Jefferson County GIS presenter demos mapping tools, hydrant and service-line tracking for Fort Atkinson
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Summary
Laura Scott, a Jefferson County GIS specialist, demonstrated municipal GIS tools — including a hydrant-flushing app, a public lead-and-copper service-line map, tree inventory, stormwater/catch-basin records and a public GIS viewer — and described the county-city intergovernmental arrangement that funds her part-time work for Fort Atkinson and Wat
Laura Scott, a Jefferson County GIS specialist who spends part of her work time supporting Fort Atkinson, gave a live demonstration on April 15 of mapping tools intended to help city staff and residents locate infrastructure, track maintenance and share field data in near real time.
Scott showed a hydrant-flushing application that records each of Fort Atkinson’s 600 hydrants and generates the annual report the city submits to the Wisconsin DNR. She also demonstrated a public dashboard that allows residents to query service-line materials (city- and private-side) by address; Scott said staff began the survey work with roughly 900 unknown private-side services and had reduced that number to about 500 at the time of the presentation.
Why this matters: the GIS tools are designed to reduce paper work in the field, speed damage assessment after storms, support lead-and-copper compliance work, and give residents an online way to look up basic property and infrastructure information.
Presentation highlights
- Hydrant flushing: Scott demonstrated tablet and phone entries showing green markers for flushed hydrants; the system produces the DNR report automatically.
- Lead and copper service mapping: the public dashboard can show known city-side and private-side service material. Unknown private-side services trigger door cards or in-person visits from the utility department.
- Sanitary and stormwater records: Scott showed heat maps of sanitary backups, a project to record catch-basin and manhole conditions with photos, and a plan to record each cleaning event rather than only the last-cleaned date.
- Trees and parks: Scott demonstrated a tree inventory and tools for parks crews to timestamp garbage-can servicing and other routine tasks for operational coordination.
Intergovernmental arrangement
City Manager Rebecca Hausman reminded the council that the GIS position is provided under an intergovernmental agreement approved in late 2023: Laura Scott is a Jefferson County employee, and Fort Atkinson and Watertown each pay a share of her salary in return for GIS services and data management.
Council questions and public access
Council members asked about the accuracy of mapped property lines and whether the public and departments use the same datasets. Scott cautioned that the public viewer is useful for orientation and filters (e.g., schools) but that deed surveys remain the authoritative source for property-boundary disputes.
What happens next
Scott said the city website will host some public viewers and staff will continue to populate field-collected data, including further reductions in unknown private-side service entries. The council was invited to contact Scott directly for follow-up; she said she is in Fort Atkinson most Wednesday mornings.
