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Committee reviews building-and-housing web content, staff says student-rental data already mapped
Summary
Members discussed cleaning up the borough’s building and housing web page and linking or exposing student-rental data from the existing GIS zoning lookup so residents and students can find property-level rental information.
West Chester — The Administration, Communication, and Technology Committee discussed enhancements to the borough building, housing and codes-enforcement web pages on Feb. 11, focusing on content ownership, organization and whether the borough should present student-rental data more accessibly.
Committee chair Brian Travis said the current presentation — a PDF spreadsheet on the website — is inadequate and urged a more user-friendly layout. "A PDF of a spreadsheet on the website is not great," he said.
The nut graf: staff and committee members agreed the underlying data exist in the borough’s cloud GIS and that modest web work could make zoning, overlay districts and student-rental status easier for residents, parents and renters to find.
Nick, the borough's data manager for Data & Map Services, demonstrated the zoning-map lookup during the meeting and said the system already contains base zoning, overlay zoning, historic-district and student-rental layers. "If you were to put in an address up on the top and it had a student rental there, it's gonna pull it back in addition to all the other zoning information," Nick said, adding the database feeds the public map viewer.
Committee members and attendees urged two priorities: reorganize the building-and-housing web page by core functions (permits, inspections, rentals and regulations) and add an obvious link to the zoning lookup. A speaker suggested a property-level map that lists student-rental contact information, calling it a useful tool for parents and neighbors; Nick said generating a map view from the existing dataset would be a short task.
The group also noted outdated artifacts on the site — a "hearing notices and proposed ordinances" section that appears incomplete and dated to 2015 — and asked staff to propose a cleanup plan and a 3.0 design concept for the department's content and navigation. Bill, who presented the earlier CISO report, confirmed IT will work with each department head to manage and publish content.
The committee agreed to revisit the item in about a month and asked staff to provide a proposal for site cleanup, clearer ownership of content and an accessible link to the zoning lookup and student-rental layer.
