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County unveils upgraded GIS public portal; vendor says no implementation cost to residents
Summary
Planning staff and vendor Civic Vanguard demonstrated a revamped GIS web portal with parcel searches, printer‑friendly property cards, mobile GPS, LIDAR elevation profiles and measurement tools; the vendor said the upgrade was provided at no implementation cost after taking over the county site from a prior contractor.
Caroline County planning staff and the vendor for the county’s geographic information system demonstrated a redesigned public GIS portal that staff said provides new search, printing and mapping tools at no cost to county taxpayers.
Leon Hughes, planning director, introduced Jamie Christiansen, founder and CEO of Civic Vanguard. Christiansen demonstrated the new interface, accessed from caroline.civquest (and via the county web page), and showed search-by-address, owner or tax map number; printer-friendly property cards that include valuation and building information; mobile GPS zoom-to-location; measurement and profile tools that draw on four-centimeter LIDAR elevation data; and filters for parcel size, sale date and year built.
“The new site is fully capable on a mobile browser,” Christiansen said, and showed an elevation‑profile tool that queries statewide LIDAR to return slope and elevation data useful for site selection or engineering. He said Civic Vanguard took over the county site from a prior vendor about 18 months ago and waived the implementation cost for the software upgrade as part of the transition; the county will remain on a maintenance contract.
Why it matters: the portal is intended to help residents, real‑estate professionals and developers quickly locate parcel information, print property cards and run basic spatial queries without contacting county staff.
Board questions and support: Supervisors asked about technical support and phone contacts; Christiansen said Civic Vanguard maintains a help page and a support phone line and offered to leave business cards for users who need assistance. Hughes thanked GIS staff member Court Caldwell for his role in implementing the upgrade.
