County seeks a junior GIS analyst housed with water authority to accelerate stormwater inventory and mapping

County officials described a plan to create a junior geographic information systems (GIS) analyst or technician to support county stormwater mapping, public works, community development and tax-assessor needs. The position would be a county employee housed within the Spalding County Water Authority so the new hire could be trained and supervised by the water authority’s established GIS team while the county funds the position through Community Development.

The board was told the county currently has a small fraction of its stormwater infrastructure inventoried. A county staff member said, “we only have about 5% of our stormwater inventory inventoried across the county,” and argued that augmenting GIS capacity is necessary to catch up with assets created by recent development.

Officials described how the water authority’s GIS group, led by Chris Reagan, has handled an increasing number of county mapping requests and that housing the new hire there would produce efficiencies: the water authority can provide daily oversight and training, while personnel would remain county employees and be funded from Community Development. General Manager Johnson told commissioners the water authority’s GIS team has matured and is prepared to support county work; staff estimated an internal billing rate that would be cheaper than outside consultants.

Staff also linked the GIS hire to the county’s broader effort to stand up a stormwater utility. Rebecca Lindsey, the county’s engineering consultant, is developing policy, procedures, an inspection schedule and a fee structure for a county stormwater program. Officials said the full build-out of the program will come in phases and that a reasonable near-term turnaround to an upscaled stormwater utility is about 18 months; staff emphasized the work will be delivered in waves and that the county will return periodically to commissioners for approvals and funding steps.

A practical reason for faster, in-house GIS work is permitting and plats: staff said electronically filed plats sometimes appeared in the GIS without proper stamps, which allowed subdivided parcels to be recorded without county review; bringing GIS capacity under closer county oversight would give the tax assessor and community development earlier notice of recorded plats. Staff proposed a pilot inspection effort in Sun City Peachtree to measure how long field inspections take (using Brandon, an in-house inspector) and then scale that estimate to the rest of the county to determine staffing needs.

County staff told the board Community Development has the funding available to cover the hire for the current fiscal year and that commissioners would be asked to approve the position and related budget items at the 6:00 p.m. meeting.